Hi Christina,
This is a long narrative chapter, and while it is written as an email from Christina to Butchie, it reads as the author's memoir. I would take snippets of the email, and intersperse them with Butchie's reactions as he reads them. This will help the reader to see these snippets as communication between the two main characters, rather than communication between the author and reader. It will also keep the focus on the present relationship rather than on the past.
After a year, I wanted to be a Sabra, too (in Hebrew: צבר. Sabra is a term to describe a native-Israeli Jew - also a fruit, a pear cactus that grows in the country).
The definition should ideally be worked in to the paragraph, rather than told to the reader. Of course, if this is in the context of an email Christina is sending to Butchie (which it is at the moment) then it's a little different. I would remove the reference to the fruit which is completely irrelevant and adds nothing but confusion.
I decided to stay with Jack's other sister, Chava, after an accident that happened in their home on a Friday or on their Sabbath (where from the sundown or dinner of Friday to the dinner of Saturday or when 3 stars appeared in the sky, the Sabbath is observed both by positive observances, such as three festive meals, and restrictions.)
I would leave out the definition of the Sabbath here, as it slows the pace of the writing, and isn't strictly necessary for the reader's understanding. You explain what is forbidden on the Sabbath in the next sentence which is enough.
I F L U S H E D the damn toilet!
I wouldn't separate the letters with spaces as you have done here, as it looks a little unprofessional for a novel. This type of informality is fine in a blog but not so much in a novel. The exclamation mark is sufficient, although you could perhaps italicise the word flushed.
(Please, my reader: click on this link as follows to listen to the Toilet Flushing Sound to really understand, grasp and have an idea of what I had done, that very instant, to that poor family all the way in Tel-Aviv, Israel!) http://www.bathroomjokes.com/bathroom/flush.htm
This is you, the author, talking directly to the reader, and pulls the reader right out of the story they are reading. I would remove this entire section. Your readers know what a flushing toilet sounds like, and the last thing you want as an author is to send your reader away from your writing to another site.
I had flushed their "loaded" toilet on Sabbaht! The family went mad! When I came out of the bathroom they were all standing there, angry, boiling red, ready to kill me. I had committed a mortal sin, ruined their names in Israel, their ancestors' names, I was a sinful, atheist girl, I was an eyver or from the other side(I guess here, from the other side of the world...), no ancestors, no traditions, a mad girl! What would the neighbors say? To flush the toilet on a Sabbath, no, never! Was I crazy??? My only defense was: nobody told me about this!!!
You captured both their horrified reaction and your own shocked response well here. I'd leave out the multiple questions marks and exclamation marks, but you do a good job of sharing those emotions with the reader.
I guess it's still there... ש"ע) כריסטינה, שם פרטי לנקבה
and this one as I wasn't sure... YISKA
As these are part of the same sentence, I would keep them on one line.
Now I hated not only nuns, but priests too, because of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (or the Church of the Resurrection) Affair within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. She asked me why so I told her the story.
Instead of the reader being able to be a part of Christina's life in the 'present' and witness her growing relationship with Butchie, you are now relating a story from Christina's past to another character in Christina's past...not even to Butchie. I think some of Christina's past can be related to Butchie as part of the getting-to-know-you stage of the relationship, especially considering that it is a long-distance courtship, but I have said above and in previous chapter reviews that these need to interspersed with current communication and 'action' so that we aren't reading pages and pages of history. This story takes us another step further away from the relationship between Butchie and Christina. Butchie isn't involved as a third party listener here. I appreciate that this is the email you were sending to Butchie, but you are distancing the reader from the relationship which should be the focus of a romance novel. It would be different if this were a memoir, but you have 'marketed' it as a romance novel, so every chapter should move the relationship forwards. I would either remove this section, or, if you think it is relevant to the growing relationship between Christina and Butchie, then reword it so that it appears more relevant.
I wore bell bottom jeans, hippie blouses and Dutch shoes, I was reading books like Sexus, Plexus and Nexus by Henry Miller, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Treblinka by Jean-Francois Steiner, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Animal Farm by George Orwell, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Don Quixote by Cervantes, War and Peace by Tolstoy, The Complete Stories by Franz Kafta, Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1984 by George Orwell, all the books by Arthur Hailey, all Morris West books, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and the Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer.
This is a really long sentence and a list that is quite hard for the reader to take in. It definitely slows the pace of your work. I would consider whether it was necessary to list so many. Perhaps one or two examples?
I wanted to say goodbye to Panela... where was she, my friend Pamela Huber?
Is it Panela or Pamela? You spell it two different ways here.
I learned many positive things (any negative things, too) such as learn how to speak French very well, how to ski, how to behave, good manners and basically, how to "survive".
I think 'any' negative things should be 'many' negative things.
She was sweating and liking her lips rapidly, breathing heavily and moving on her chair heavily, next to my bed.
Liking should be licking.
I would remove the excerpt from the kissing book as it doesn't add anything of value to the relationship between Butchie and Christina.
You have lived an utterly fascinating life, Christina. I am quite in awe of all you have done and seen, and this is only the early stages of your life as of this chapter. It is quite remarkable. I think you could certainly consider writing this as a memoir rather than a romance novel. That would allow you to write the past in present tense, rather than having to keep the focus on the relationship all the time. And the relationship would come later, as it did in real life. I think a lot of this background info isn't relevant to a romance novel, and I can see that it would be hard to remove it all. Anyway, that's a consideration for you. Of course, my reviews are all looking at this as a romance novel, so if you do decide to switch focus, please remember that not all of my suggestions will still be relevant.
~ Elle
WRITE ON!
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