Wow thank you very much for the thorough in depth review! Definitely has given me some food for thought regarding the redraft. It has been most useful and I will think about what you have said.
Short Story / The Placebo Lover (Analysis)
It was the morning after. I stood leaning against my balcony hoping that a cool wind and a cigarette would help me sober up. The sun was already high up in the sky, the market was bustling down below and I was still drunk. I was trying very hard to ignore the sadistic music stand down in the street in front of my house, blaring out the same bloody bachata song which the owner ritually played on loop every Sunday morning. Living centrally has the advantages of being able to stumble home inebriated at 6 am after indulging in the all night pleasures and pastimes Madrid has to offer; it also has the disadvantage of being slap bang in the middle of Madrid’s largest open air market which takes place every Sunday morning. The Rastro predates me by over a century; it is a colourful market where one can buy everything from clothes, shoes and those annoying bachata cds.
On an ordinary weekday the Calle Ribera de Curtidores was nothing special. It was a wide street lined with trees and old and flaking historic apartment blocks of tiny apartments which retained their proletarian charm of the days when families were large and life was simpler. The apartments were usually five stories high, with rectangular windows and iron balconettes. The buildings all varied in colours, and not one was like the others. Some were a rich terracotta, others were sunny yellows, dirty browns – all the warm colours of the south expressed in these buildings. The steep street was lined with trees and frequented by gypsy youths who would hang out on the steps of the old dance school and practice flamenco. It was not a particularly beautiful part of town, instead of having a sense of decayed grandeur of grand baroque and neo-gothic palatial apartments and palaces which were in need of repair, the houses here, first built for the poor, were now refurbished being sold off to rich yuppies. It used to be a part of town people used to avoid, the area here was working class, poor and dangerous, but now in our seemingly classless years it had started to become trendy again.
On a Sunday it became something else. The normally empty streets would become filled with endless stalls of crap. Half of Madrid would flock to this street on a Sunday morning to buy and sell trinkets and rip off dumb tourists in the mean time as well. Not only was the main street of Ribera de Curtidores flowing with a river of people, but even the side streets were also contaminated by stalls and people. It spilled down into my small and tiny street which is pretty narrow to begin with, even without the crowds.
I tried to ignore the streets below. I reclined on the balcony enjoying the sun which caressed my back, elevating the temperature of my skin a pleasurable way, warming the muscles and cooking my skin. I took sensuous pleasure in smoking my camel blues. I concentrated on that smooth, silky smoky taste, the rush of nicotine through my blood and the aesthetics of the silvery smoke coiling around the messy room like a three dimensional art nouveau painting. My room was dark, the walls were painted in some faded terracotta, and the floor was scattered with dark coloured clothes. The only light things in my room were the large heavy white curtains which were playing in the wind on each side of me. My attention was turned to my bed. A simple double bed, it had no distinguishing features but simply acted as a blank canvas, highlighting the beautiful dreaming man lying on it. Perfectly formed limbs with cheap white sheets coiled around his sculpted torso; his complexion light caramel in colour. The light highlighted his delicate features, his perfect straight nose, his beautiful full lips locked into a soft smile as he was dreaming. He could have belonged in a gallery or a museum! The cruel joke is that although he looks so much like you, it was nothing but an illusion. You were there, up in the north, in the cold and rain away from your native south and I was here.
A moan came from his lovely lips as he lifted his arms and arched his back in a feline manner. He opened his large, almond shaped, dark eyes and looked at me, he smiled with a boyish, inviting smile.
“Come back to bed guapa!” he said half dreamily and half seductively with his misleading british accent. I threw my cigarette out of the window disdainfully and hopped over the pile of clothes, crawling into bed to rejoin my sizzling Anglo-Galician bedmate. I snuggled up, lying with my back to him and felt his warm arms wrap round my waist. His hands made there way under my scruffy t-shirt over my stomach and then further up feeling for my breasts. It was a lascivious gesture which coming from him seemed so innocent, harmless and playful. Henry was everybody’s chum and everybody’s sex toy. He could get away with it because of his beauty and also because he was Henry. He had the kind of nature that could relax even the most stressful person in the world simply by his very presence. I think it was a combination between his peculiar smoking habits and his forever youthful mindset.
We lay for a while in bed surviving the sudden hangover which had invaded our minds like bailiffs hammering on the door. I lay there half asleep and imagined he was you for a while, losing myself in this pleasurable deception which made even the fiftieth loop of “obsesión” on the music stand bearable. Eventually he removed his arms from me and he sat up clumsily as he moved himself to the edge of the bed. The sheet fell away leaving him naked on the side of the bed, without a shred of modesty. His form was aesthetically perfect with manly muscular curves and slender delicacy. One could be mistaken in thinking they were looking at a classical sculpture or a painting, except that this work of Phidias was preparing the paraphenalia for skinning up a joint. He was definitely not you!
He attended so carefully to his chemistry and composition with the skill and expertise of a surgeon. He licked the paper and sealed it looking at me with those large, vacant, pretty dark eyes, I then realised one physical contrast to you – your eyes are not only full of depth but are blue! He shrugged his shoulders and let out a coy laugh; he noticed my disapproving look.
“What?” He said playfully. Then looking at the little white cylinder in his hand he smiled back and replied “breakfast!” He put the spliff in his mouth and lit it with the mundane expression as if it were just an ordinary cigarette. Henry smoked as much as I did, but never cigarettes. He passed it to me and I politely took a drag. I was still drunk from the night out before, so I had a legitimate excuse to indulge in more irresponsible behaviour that was bad for me. Fortunately with the quantities in which Henry smokes pot, it is necessary for him to make each joint very weak. Instead of one dizzying high he just spends the time on a happy stoned plateau.
Even in bed Henry is like a friend, its his charm. He can fuck you good and hard all night and the next morning you can sit there bitching about the new album by Metallica or reciting the same anecdote about how he once set his hand on fire while trying to prepare some absinthe. Henry is one of the few men I know who can sleep with all of his female friends in turn and leave each one satisfied and utterly phlegmatic. One day I am his girl in his bed and the next day it is someone else I know well or am acquainted with and I feel nothing more than indifference about the matter.
My actions are far more cruel, sinister and selfish than Henry’s immature affairs with women. I used Henry. My addiction to you was manifested through him, he was my substitute.
The first time I saw Henry was at a birthday party of a friend. He came out of the dark in one of the side streets in La Latina and my heart jumped. I thought I saw your ghost. An apparition that was so alike you, yet at the same time so different it left me aghast. Devilishly handsome and deviously mischievous. He was like you without your intellectual mind, a simplified and stripped down version of you. To call Henry a dumb or stupid would not only be cruel but also inaccurate. He was smart, but he was inertial. He was happy being twenty five for the rest of his life. Already living his life ambition of smoking endless amounts of joints, working in the scruffy bar in the bowels of Malasaña doing the sound for amateur punk gigs and taking girls home using only his pretty eyes and a flash of his charming smile. He was a man in his thirties who never stopped living like a teenager. But he was simple, he lived a simple life and was happy. Your complexity made you dark, inpenetrable, discontent. Your mind was a labyrinth surrounded by ten foot high walls which rarely cracked. Your looks were synonymous, but all the adjectives that would describe you were antonyms.
I remember the last time I saw you in London, the happiness I had on seeing you after our separation for almost a year. I remember your eloquence, the hint of seduction in your eyes and the taste of temptation in your voice as you casually declared you were staying in you brothers empty apartment in the area. I remember our laughs and our nostalgic reminiscing that day, but I also can’t think of you without remembering the pain I felt as we parted. You blew me a kiss from the top of the entrance as I descended into the underground, this was my last visual memory of you. We were the right people, but we never got the time and place right. It was a love affair which we both knew could have had something special, but never had the chance to truly germinate. This to me was more tragic than a love affair gone sour. We never lost the feeling of home and the anticipation of the good to come.
Seeing Henry then brought back these memories, these feelings I thought I was over, that I thought I had conveniently denied and ran away from all these years. Then months had passed again and I forgot both you and Henry. But we were reunited at a friendly gathering. After a few drinks we were getting to know each other through a form of communication which used our mouths and tongues but no words on my best friend’s sofa for most of the night. I took no value in it, kisses in the 21st century mean a lot less now to a lot of people than they did in the past. We both kissed many people that night. It was only lust and that was fleeting. We agreed to meet for drinks after work once. The lust was less fleeting than I had anticipated.
I knew it was a bad idea to do this. I knew I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I was not like the other girls who saw this man as an object of desire and an easy play. I wanted to find you in him, I needed a replacement. He looked like you and I played along with the illusion.
After a few drags on Henry’s lightweight joint I realise that I am in need of coffee. I stumble into the kitchen and threw some stale coffee into the Italiana. The kitchen is a mess. My flatmates have not cleaned anything for days. The paper on the walls have started to flake. It is then I realise I am getting too old for this bohemian lifestyle. I work in a crappy job through the day to earn a small amount of money which I throw away on drink and partying. I survive on a diet of coffee, cigarettes and alcohol and four hours of sleep a night.
Henry comes into the kitchen as the mokka starts to bubble and the kitchen is smelling of a rich and nutty smell of coffee. He leans against the door dressed now in a pair of scruffy hole-ridden jeans and a faded Bauhaus t-shirt. His lovely long hair tied back neatly into a ponytail. I hand him a mug of black coffee and he lights up another joint. We talk a bit, the kind of dumb small talk one makes while in a state of waking up and moving out of a hangover. I realise that he talks a lot and has nothing to say, and if he did not have his beauty, he would be ordinary. Nice, fun, sweet but ordinary. We drank the coffee and we left the apartment. I lit a cigarette in the stairwell as he was giving me some dull anecdote how the band he did the sound for were so bad that they solely relied on sound effects to make them interesting. We reached the door and were on the street. We kissed each other on the cheak with “los dos besos” as friends do and went in our own directions. I felt nothing. Empty. He was not you.
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LuckyHabit reviewed Version 1 -
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Some small editing errors, nothing to take away from the story (you=your the only true mistake I noticed)
I love the story very descriptive the details pulled me in I wanted to read more so I could see more of this land I had not ventured.
I’m not a fan of fiction but I wish this was a book so I could know more though I appreciate that it is a short story because I can relate & am happy to know I am not the only one even if it is only a character I relate to.
I think you are a talented writer & that you should pursue getting published actively.
KAZAA! Keep up the good work I would read more of your work!
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sjvance reviewed Version 1 -
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Vivid descriptions of the scene in the beginning of the story, place the reader in the scene with your character.
It used to be a part of town people used to avoid, the area here – reword, “in the past this was a part of town people tried to avoid”
muscles and cooking my skin - you already said, “elevating the temperature of my skin” I would leave the “cooking my skin” out.
On the third paragraph on page 2, you say the character is out on the balcony, and then you talk about smoke in the room and describe the room – need to clarify where the character is
apparition that was so alike you - so “like” you
call Henry a dumb or stupid – omit “a”
you dark, inpenetrable, discontent -impenetrable
declared you were staying in you brothers - in “your” brothers
realise - “realize”
Mokka - Mocha
This is good, I love your style of writing. You do a good job of taking the reader through the story, making them feel as though they are a part of it. It ended a little abruptly for me, or maybe I just wanted to read more. The characters develop nicely as well. Great job.
JaCarloHairston reviewed Version 1 -
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I think attempt was very well written. Your character sounds like she has all the characteristics of a fully funtionable anti hero. Playing with emotions having her emotions played with doing drugs still seeing beauty in nature, etc. Very good job.
P.S. your use of details are on point.
Claire_D reviewed Version 1 -
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You are eminently wise to hone your writing technique in short stories before crossing over to the novel form. I like you already. Things are looking good so far.
Your preliminary paragraphs are a bouncing bachata bonanza. With a hip-swinging expositional teaser, your opening sentence thrusts us into the splendiferous underworld of spinning flamenco rhythms and throbbing España culture. It is a rip-roaring riot of pin-sharp detail, introducing both the prelude to the main story and an insight into the shabbier social conditions of our narrator. Only one niggle in the first paragraph… I would like a comma after ‘balcony’ to help retain the musicality of your narrative.
In the second paragraph, I wondered about having ‘grand’ and ‘grandeur’ in such close proximity. I think because the description is so vivid, verging on that of a travelogue, you are allowed to drop one of these. Probably ‘grand’ since it is the weaker word. Also, ‘rich yuppies’ seems a little tautologous given there are no poor equivalents.
Some readers have a bugbear about adverbs being followed by an adjective ending in Y. I think ‘normally empty’ might be an example of this, and at the risk of sounding exceedingly petty (whoops – I did it there), I would perhaps suggest a synonym of ‘empty’ in this instance. Your piece does thrive on this type of sly word play however, so I toss this in more as a dubious afterthought.
I am unsure about the use of ‘elevate’ as normally this relates to someone physically being higher, rather than increasing something insensate. I would recommend a synonym of ‘increase’ here. Also, since you describe the sun as ‘pleasurable,’ to have ‘cooking’ here implies a state of discomfort to me, rather than being tanned gently. Perhaps imply that the sun was tanning him in some way rather than boiling him alive. Bad experience of holidays – forgive me.
“smooth, silky smoky taste” = this wielding of three adjectives for the price of one is a very Nabokovian trait, which at first I disliked, but then I thought chimed in with the style quite well. I think, however, the alliterative rhythm you are after can be retained by losing one of these. I would plump for ‘silky’ if I had any power whatsoever over the redraft.
“aesthetics” = as much as I applaud the creative use of this word, it appears incongruous in reference to cigarette smoke, I feel. The idea is great – to align this early morning fag to a state of higher philosophical beauty, however because this sentence is longer than most, it lurches the rhythm somewhat for me. Using it elsewhere in the story (in perhaps a truncated form of this description) and I am sold on the usage.
“three-dimensional…” = I think specifying the type of painting is not entirely necessary here. I have seen it done before in many stories, but in this instance it drags the sentence on for far too long. I think ‘art nouveau’ is capitalised and hyphenated.
You use ‘highlighted’ in quick succession later on, which lets down the flow of a piece that uses sharp, controlled bursts of prodigious adjectives in a fast and loose way. I like the sudden lurch towards the POV of the man sprawled on the bed, and then the direct address of the reader. This is subtly handled, and raises the elegant poise of the story.
“lovely lips” = not sure about this phrase, it is a little saccharine for the architectural style of the story.
“Galician” = if Madrid is in the NW of Spain, which I am sure it is, then this word is fine. If it isn’t – it isn’t.
“there way” = their way
“His hands… breasts” = this sentence needs some commas to help the flow and to make the scene more scuzzy/sensual. Your punctuation is exemplary throughout, so I trust you know where to stick ‘em.
“and also” = delete ‘also’
“between his…” = perhaps of his instead?
“We lay… the door” = this whole sentence struck me as problematic. Hangovers arrive normally upon the minute of waking, which makes the ‘sudden’ appearance unlikely. The use of ‘invaded’ juxtaposed with ‘bailiffs’ and the hangover is a bad mixed metaphor. I do believe you can use this word in relation to the blighters booting down your door to repossess your soft furnishings and the like, but here is seems misplaced. I think perhaps ‘hammering’ doesn’t help, as it cancels out the image of them ‘invading’ (i.e. not politely knocking but coming in regardless). I would chop ‘sudden’ and replace ‘hammering.’
“obsesión” = capitalise?
“and he sat up” = lose the second ‘he’ here
“this work of Phidias” = this reference seems out of place somewhat, it looks like an alliteration insert
“he was… not you!” = I’m not loving the exclamation marks here and earlier. They slightly impinge upon the clingy grave tone of the story thus far and read more like a sneering embittered lover trying to get a childish revenge on her former inamorato. I would lose them entirely as the tone changes and becomes far more interesting that way.
The story twists into less ‘grand’ territory and more bitchy territory as it progresses, which to me springs up like an unwanted Mr. Hyde with a large bloody scythe, and loses my interest slightly. The scuzziness is evoked through using beautiful terms and language in the previous pages, but when we learn of the foul-mouthed narrator in a more candid way, the piece for me loses its lost, drifting and dark edge. We lose the mystery and the shabby decadence of the scene; replaced by two travellers whose identities are more than evident. These are banal modern junkies.
In saying this, you write in a way that kept me guessing and hooked on a hyper-elegant turn of phrase. I think the way in which you can weave perspectives on your characters and also in your narrative style is exemplary (although your reliance on the first person pronoun sticks out for me).
Regardless, this is a piece from a very intriguing short story writer with great linguistic skill and wizardry who I feel would benefit merely through redrafting their work with more precision. I hope I helped you to move towards this.
Oh – excellent ending. It wins the story back for me with its soft, bittersweet jeté.
Claire_D
MichaelDark reviewed Version 1 -
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Entertaining. I would use a synonym in place of one of the two ‘terracottas’, preferrably in the description of the bedroom.
I also offer that, espically in short stories, the use of shorter sentences are preferred. Also check the use of the semi-colon in earlier text.
This type of writing is not my cup of tea. Having said that, my attention was kept and I was ‘led’ along nicely. The fact that, given the plot and my indifference to it, you kept me for the length of the piece should be taken as ‘encouraging’.
I was able to ‘feel’ the protagonist and Henry was shaped to life nicely. I give props.
johnmarionfrancis reviewed Version 1 -
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The story started out very well balanced. The setup and environment was very good. The character blend into the begin maintained through the first two paragraphs.
While the descriptions to setup the story were very good and drew me into the story, it began to stall as I was trying to get back on track.
The actions of the character were very easy to absorb and build as I read on. But here again PG 2, the descriptions had me stalling.
Pg 3 – Good character flaws in the second character introduction with good descriptions with over doing it. Like the light touch of intimacy without over doing it (a little goes a long ways if you let the reader take the lead).
Pg 4 – The characters needed more dialog between them.
Pg 5 – The setup of Henry as this point seemed to come too late in the story. I had already established a connection with him Pg 3. My recommendation is to move this to Pg 3 to give the character his support background so you can tie it back to your attraction to him.
P 6 – I felt like you slipped into another story while you were telling me (the reader) about your feelings. I lost my momentum at this point, but hopeful you’ll pick it up on the next page.
Pg 7-8 – You said you “talk a bit” but there is no dialog here to build up the ending. I have no connection to the characters as they say nothing that I can connect to other than “talk a bit”.
SUMMARY
If this is a short story then you need more middle to build up and support the ending. The characters need to talk more. You descriptions are awesome, your setups are excellent, your blend of your culture comes through very well.
If this is going to be a novella or novel, then you’re on the right track.
Jonathon
lilceresita23 reviewed Version 1 -
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PERFECT.
You not only caught my attention but you kept it.
Being of Latin decent..I LOVED the use of Spanish in your work.
The story was great…personally for me..VERY RELATE-ABLE!!!!!
I have nothing more really to say…because well it was PERFECT!!!
definately publishable…it is GOOOOD!
GOOD JOB! CONGRATS!!!
YOU HAVE A NEW FAN!!!
:o)
Lin reviewed Version 1 -
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Nice enough decription of a hotel room in Madrid & recovering from a drinking session. Henry’s attraction wanes & there is lot of cigarette smoking. The writing skill with ok but the subject matter of little interest to me.
serenitylace reviewed Version 1 -
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very well written. your descriptions of madrid made me feel as though i were there. i feel like this didnt tell the entire story, you have history and a clear path with this you could take. who is he this guy she is obsessed with? who is she? does she give up the bohemian lifestyle? does she give up henry? and a million other flood my mind.
Charley_Groth reviewed Version 1 -
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Everything was very clear and I was able to imagine everything as I read. I’m missing insight. I get the point but isn’t stirring my soul as why you love this other guy so much. You are substituting but I’m not sure why these people are so diametrically opposed and why this is something that you gravitate towards. It’s all there just needs added punch. Try interjecting more of your feelings as you are describing the action and environment. How are you effected by your environment.
Cut down on words. Your writing is so clear that the occasional run on fun sentence will add variety and develop you subtlety.
Thanx
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