Response to Paul Vance's “The Day Beverly Lost Jessica”

(Hi, Paul. Hi, Dr. Spell.)

This story dealt with two main themes. The main character, Beverly, seemed to be a mother realizing that her daughter is growing past the special relationship where a mother and a daughter can be best friends. Beverly wants to keep her daughter close, but Jessica desires fame. The conflict centers around the two opposing desires. Beverly's daughter is reaching her teenage years when the only goal for a kid is to grow up as quickly as possible, and Beverly is having to come to terms with this. The secondary theme dealt with our modern youtube culture which has so much emphasis on the media and pursuing fame. There was a bit of social critiquing going on, as Beverly questions whether the agency can really make her daughter famous. Of course, then Jackson sends the twelve-year-old out into the brawl in the lobby and calls for the camera. Paul seems to be suggesting that child stars are often sacrificed for the sake of fame and someone else's paycheck.

There were quite a few phrases that I really enjoyed. Paul described the girls as having “their hair made up, their faces made-up....their skirts hemmed-up” (1). I liked the parallelism. Some of Jessica's dialogue in particular seemed very appropriate for a character in her age range. She tells her mom, “You shouldn't ask stuff like that before stuff like this, Mom”, with all the vagueness of a real twelve-year-old. Also, the way the music lyrics were woven into the dialogue towards the end of the piece worked great. It built up the chaos and the suspense until the fight broke out.

As far as suggestions go, it seemed a little imbalanced to me. The first page is a block of text, heavy with narration. The first sentence is eight lines long. While the really convoluted sentences helped to imbue the reader with some of the sensory overload Beverly was experiencing, it contrasted a little too sharply with the abrupt shift to dialogue-heavy text on pg. 5. All of a sudden, there was no narration. I would suggest thinning the narration out a little bit in the beginning, and making the transition a little bit more gradual from one to the other. Maybe you could add a little bit more detail about the character's actions on page five, include a couple dialogue tags on page six, and gradually ween the reader off of them. I think you need to keep the last page or two as free of these tags as you can, because I love the way the story moves. It really gains momentum when you don't tell the reader who is speaking. The only narration I would suggest adding in the last couple pages would be a brief sentence introducing Mark and pointing out his entrance, because the addition of another character confused me at first.

Great job! It was fun to read.