About Beautiful Daughters by Haley Carrollhach

            (You should read Beautiful Daughters by Haley Carrollhach)

            This is a story about a woman and her daughters and how everything seems to be slipping away from her. And it’s a good one. Mostly.

It’s absolutely clear how she feels about her daughters, which is good and important, and it’s not so clear how her daughters actually feel about her, but that’s good also because we’re not in their heads, we’re in hers. This is her story, her moment, and we come away with a good idea of everything that’s happening viewed through her eyes.

Right. The problem, I think, is how this story is arranged, what I believe you might call its “structure.” Often, it is a good idea to let the audience in on salient details slowly, in short doses, throughout the story. I don’t think that strategy worked so well here though. There’s a fine line between reading further because you want to know the answers and actually being distracted by not having them, and think Carrollhach may have strayed a little too far past that line. I found myself asking “why don’t I know more” more often than “oh, what should I know here.”

I kept reading though, so it can’t have been so bad.

Finally, though, and I believe I may have made a similar point before, but one very important success in this story is the choice of narrator. This is another example of a rare perspective. We’ve seen plenty of stories about daughters afraid of their parents, but it’s a lot more difficult, I suspect to get into the head of the other party in that particular dynamic. Carrollhach has definitely done a good job there, I think.