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Roland Finds A Friend


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Spoiler Alert! Please read Roland Finds a Friend in the Short Story section of the AD Homepage before reading this message.

I just read this short story. It's great! Very enjoyable.

And, it seemed to me, about half finished. I want to know what happens next. I know the team won the game, but that's about the least important element in this story.

Come on now! Does Roland live permanently with his grandparents? Is their any reconciliation with his parents? What does Roland's mother have to say? As Roland's father seems to be one-third the ownership of his car agency, does the two-thirds go against him? What happens to the grandparent's money in their wills? What happens to the elite's efforts against the liquor store owner? How does the school admin react to their benefactors' sons' problems? There are all sorts of storylines here going begging!

Captivating story and characters, but I'd like some more, please? Hey, it didn't work for Oliver, but it might work for me. Please?

C

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Links, I need Links! I need something to click on. I need a direction. oops. Pun intended. :)

It's at www.awesomedude.com/pertinaxcarrus/short_stories/roland_finds_a_friend.htm.

I agree. Roland Finds a Friend should be a serial novel, not just a short story. There are too many things that are either unresolved or only partially resolved, and too many hooks for connecting up more chapters. The two principal characters are interesting and well drawn and with more chapters they could be fully developed. The leading villain (Brick) is a nasty piece of work and well named, and Gus is an abusive snob extraordinaire. Roland's mother is just a cardboard cutout at this point, but a chapter or two would flesh her out (so to say). In other words, this is chapter one of a serial novel masquerading as a short story, no more, no less. :wave:

Colin :icon_geek:

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I read the story a while ago and broke my usual practice of posting a feedback comment in this forum because I couldn't articulate how I felt about it. But you guys have nailed it nicely. It's well-written, with interesting characters but it's not a complete story. It's chapter one and now I want to read chapters two to ... oh, at least five, I think!

So, bravo but we want more!

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Guest Dabeagle

With all the hubbub I had to go check it out for myself. Personally I wasn't as in love with the story as others. I think this is in large part due to the narrator POV and felt like some things needed more fleshing out. Amy swooshes in, plays a huge pivotal scene and swooshes out. It felt rushed and too many things were told rather than shown.

I'd have liked to see this more fleshed out with longer chapter / chapters since there is a core here, and idea which resonates.

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Boy, I hate to add to a chorus of somewhat negative criticism, but I felt the way a lot of the other readers seem to have felt with this one. It was a very enjoyable story and, yet, I somehow felt removed from it. It was a bit like reading the Cliff Notes version. I have nothing against the third person perspective - one doesn't need a first person perspective to convey emotion - but I was left feeling detached from the main character. I'm not so sure this needed to be a serialized story as others have commented. I think that part of the problem was that the author was trying to leave Roland's sexuality ambiguous until the end. Leaving the story devoid of emotions certainly had the intended effect, but there probably was a better way. The key is that Roland himself didn't really understand his sexuality, so it should have been easy to have given the story more depth without giving anything away. Pertinax is a talented writer and I would love to see this one fleshed out a little more.

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  • 3 months later...

This was a great little backstory for me, as I recently read Bryce and the villains of that piece are the same as the villains of this piece. I agree with the others, and I can explain why, despite the good plot, this wasn't a terribly successful story: telling, not showing. This felt more like a character study, or a developmental piece for the novel.

cheers!

AJ

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