Response to Janelle Green's "The Truth Behind the Window"

(Hi, Janelle!)

This story dealt with the theme of suburban hypocrisy. Christina (that's me!) watches her neighbors through her window and so is exposed to much of their lives that they didn't want others to see. The irony is that Christina's own life is less perfect. She is content to be aware of that hypocrisy of her neighbors, and not to do anything about it just as she doesn't do anything to salvage her own less-than-perfect marriage.

There were quite a few phrases in this piece that really captured images. For example, on the first page, the Larry's jacket is "beginning to swell with patches of dark gray" from the rain.  "His looks were all he had" on pg. 3 is another favorite phrase of mine. Also, the comparison of watching through the window to watching a silent movie was a very effective comparison (pg.1). Finally, the scenes that Christina witnesses from her window are hilarious! I love the description of Larry in the rain, not realizing his keys are on the ground not that far from him, and I love the scene with the spoiled little girl who doesn't want to have to pedal. The image of her dad running back to the house with her flailing in his arms to fetch a Band-Aid for her was perfect.

As far as suggestions go, I have a few concerns. It took me a little while to figure out how old Christina was intended to be. Mostly, the sentence "watching her neighbors was fun" made me wonder if she was younger. Consider using a more mature adjective there, or clarifying that Christina is a fully grown married woman a little earlier on in your story. I wasn't sure of her relative age until pg. 3. Also, I'm not sure that switching from present tense to past tense over and over again was necessary. I'm not sure if this was intended, or to what end it would have been intended. I marked all the sections where this occurred. I would suggest maintaining past tense for the duration of the story, because the immediacy of present tense isn't very necessary to the heart of the story and the switches are distracting. There are some grammatical discrepancies as well. I tried to mark them all in the text, but it was a little distracting at times. Finally, I wish there was more development during the actual story. Why is Christina married to Theo? And how does she actually change during the course of the story? She seems content at the end with only knowing the real truth about her neighbors and their lives, even if no one else knows it and it doesn't change anything, but that doesn't seem that different from the very beginning of the story.

Thanks for writing! It was fun to read.