Hi,

I came across your item, liked what I read and would like to share my thoughts about it.


Plot: After a car accident, Heather's attitude towards her whole view on the world and past change… to the better?


Style/Voice: 3rd person limited, Heather


Setting: A lonely part of highway in the rainy pamper



Characters:

Heather is confused and in pain after the collision. Her mind springs back and forth from the past to the present, mixes both up. Bit for bit, however, it crystallizes that she's a person (and personality) quite unprepared for life. Rather a dreamer and a Johnny Head-in-the-Air, she's in her own world, which shows in forgetfulness and inability to deal with the consequences in real life. She's rather driven by superficialness, fixated especially on prettiness and popularity issues, much like the students she teaches.

She doesn't trust her love to her boyfriend enough to realize that he'll stay with her even after what happened. She blames her parents and her grandparents for having her shaped this way.

It's the crying child in the other car, however, which literally blows away the whiny, incapable of life, "earlier" Heather and gives the "real" Heather beneath all the mental clutter a chance. This Heather is strong, determined and tough as nails, yet sensitive and intuitive with scared kid. All inabilities and superficial dump seem gone, only the future and Heather's vow to the little count now.


Parents / Grandparents are mentioned as pampering, oppressively loving and having "created" the weak person as which Heather considers herself.



Grammar: Beware! Below I've pointed out, corrected things and made suggestions based on how I would've put things. However, I'm ESL, so you might not agree with everything.




The first thought that hit Heather had (…)

Then pain hit her. (…)

The minivan had hit(…) her Plymouth head-on. (…) wiper blades waving back and forth (…)

(…) the thin fabric of her stretch pants. (…) Sometimes bills went unpaid, or she'd forget an essential ingredient to a grocery list, or the birthdays of loved ones(period) (…) a nerve-wracking first hour (…) menopauseyou Yanks steal odd words from the German language , (…) the most surreal (one).

(…) the horn casing had been fractured (…) jagged cracks in the center like fault lines.

(…) the twenty-twoyear old van. (…) softer horn casings filled with air bags (…) soft horn casings came with a car payment (…)

(…) to adjust the rear view mirror. (…) not of someone she recognized.

(…) bloody spit bubbles popping between her lips.

(…) shattered,(no comma) and banished in favor of (…)

(…) As if her recognition freed the nerve endings, (…)

(…) Granpapa,(no comma) with his loving smile, (…)

She had loving, sheltering parents;(no semicolon) who they protected her (…) a careening minivan on a rain-soaked highway. (…)

(…) a crippled, ugly woman,(no comma) forsaken by everything (…) Maybe(comma) if she just waited (…), (…) assist the process of death by blood loss, (…)

(…) either side window, but she could not see out the front (…)

(…) She saw the middle-aged woman lying face down

(…) she used all her strength and pain tolerance to pry her lower legs free (…)

Opening Pushing her car door open, (…) Screaming, she pushed herself up (…) Throwing herself against the side door, (…) the last bit of her strength.

Inside was a two-year{c:orange{(hyphen) old girl -- adorable pig tails, (…)

(…) Rain fell down on her face (…)

(…) this senseless tragedy that had brought them together.

(…) then alleverything was silent.


Personal Opinion: This was a very moving story, one of development and inspiration, as horrible as the frame story may be. Isn't it interesting that it's always such crossroads as Heather faces when it shows who we really are, stripped of all the past and the mental crap we carry with us?

The story was very realistic in the sense how Heather's mind side stepped and meshed past, present, and the emotionally and mental "coloring" of these events. I guess almost all victims of such a horrible, literally life changing events go through this.

This was also a story of identity though. It showed very empathetic what can happen if parents love and pamper too much, when they don't know boundaries and leave room for their children to also make unpleasant experiences and learn their lessons from it, when they deny this their children out of misunderstood want to protect them. Weak, helpless and superficial personalities like Heather "in the beginning" result. That's called "learned helplessness". But it also shows that it's everyone's own duty to set these boundaries. We have to live our own life, and not have it lived.

What may slumber beneath that, though, Heather shows in the last quarter of the story. The "ignition" for the "real" Heather is the most archaic one that can trigger a woman to do the seemingly and physically impossible: a child's cry. All us women are "proto-mothers" deep down, and this immense potential of energy can change us in an instant… if only it is triggered. It's our own choice though if we use it for the better or not.

Okay, after the "goodies" comes the BUTs.

First, very hyphenated story. Many of those little buggers you didn't need. Some clunky formulations and missed words which I dared to change respectively add.

Second: as realistic and palpable the description of Heather's condition was *shudders*, there were some misunderstandings. Even after such a violent impact, it takes longer than five minutes before an eye turns black. First, they only swell shut, then they "change color". And blood tastes coppery, not salty. I know. I've landed on my face quite a few times as a kid to know. (Thank God, I've no scars left.)

Third: Heather's car turned from a twenty-two year old Plymouth into a minivan. Or did you mix it up with the one who rammed Heather's car?



Don't forget that I'm just someone voicing her opinion. You know best what's best for your story.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .