I think that this review will end up sounding more like a fan letter than a review. First, for me the content of a literatary work gets about seventy-five percent of the marks. But those marks only stand if the execution of the piece is effective. Here, you have tackled an extremely difficult and important and pervasive subject (full marks); and pulled it off so spectacularily that it's almost scary. Surely this must be some sort of charity publishing this here. I'll accept that sort of char...

I heard a figure that about fifty thousand American soldiers died in Vietnam, and five hundred thousand have died by their own hands back in the US since that war. Military service does not absolve one from making moral choices. Your point is deeply valid; and it is a sad, sad commentary on the moral state your country that such a morally sound point must be censored.

Your format reminds me somewhat of the beginning of that book by James Joyce (whose title I can't remember right now) which depicts the awakening in the morning of the city of Dublin. Many of your words and phrases are delightfully British (probably specifically northern). Your poetic form is a bit too loose for me, but if you are trying to devise an altogether new format, who am I too criticise? If you wanted a specific name for this format, I would suggest "The Ramble" (as in, walk at a ra...

This piece was just absolutely delightful. If I didn't know better, I would say that you were a Canadian. The voice of Paul is so astonishingly similar to a Canadian comedian on a program called "This Hour Has 22 Minutes", that I will, for the purposes of this review pretend that you are him. This is such sophisticatedly wicked humour that I am having trouble believing that you are only 21. I myself believe that the working title is just perfect for this piece (or series if that is what it t...

To answer your specific question, it depends on the publisher. This is probably enough for a publisher to judge whether or not it wants chapters. It's a good teaser. If it was me, and since the autobiography is fictionalised, I would pick some business more recogniseable and glamorous that "restaurant supply and equipment." Not to insult anyone here, but that sounds like a cliche for tedium. The market for this novel might be niche; but not marginal. You might expand this story into the realm...

Cat', This is not a review specifically of this installment, but rather of everything of yours that I have read here. It's about literary architecture. It's one more area where you do real, real good. The attention paid to the overall structure of a piece, or a series of pieces, differentiates the professionals from the amateurs. The frustrating thing about attending to the architecture, for a beginning writer, is that it seems like nothing is happening because no words are making their way o...

I'm flattered, but I thought that this wasn't supposed to be funny. My Webster's New Collegiate doesn't even include the word adposition (and I just now see that it's upsetting my spell check as well). For me, those damn misplaced apostrophes stab about as sharply as Oedipussss needles. It looks like Urbis won't save this review until I satisfactorily complete a sufficiently adequate aggregate of verbal units to fulfill an arbitrary quota as authoritarianly imposed by the omni-powerful purve...

You mean to say that Donald Rumsfeld's convoluted justification for the American military (and moral and strategic and sociological) catastrophe in Iraq wasn't even original? I.E.- He was plagiarizing Anonymous? Figures. The general thrust of what you are trying to say here does filter through your rather contorted structure, but not, quite frankly; very clearly. In only somewhat less than random order: (1) Regarding grammatical structure, each new quote is usually afforded a new paragraph. ...

This is a deceptively sophisticated story. In publishing circles, a story with an unexpected "hook" the points to a deep psychological or sociological process is looked upon generously. For me, your unvarnished narrative and dialogue ring authentic. Your character development is as good as it can be in this short a story. Your character development of the "Home Boy" is executed deftly through the responses to him by other peripheral characters in the story, which I find more effective than s...

I must confess at the outset of this review that I am not generally a fan of free verse. But, in fairness, the definition of poetry must consist at least partly of a density of expression not present in other literary forms. This piece is very dense (I.E.- high content to word ratio). Having grown up on the great plains, I can sympathize with the theme of drought. I am not understanding the reference to the bull not killing the scarecrow enough, but the imagery does set the context for the po...