"Brotherly Love"

 “Brotherly Love” seems to be about the relationship between William, his brother, his nephew and niece, and their house. William’s brother, Steven, wants to hold onto the house, even though it is expensive and William can get a better job elsewhere. Steven wants to keep the house so his children will have stability, while William thinks that their quality of life will be higher elsewhere. The burglary reveals the danger to their domestic life.

The dialogue was awesome. I mean really, really great. It gave us a great look at your characters earlier on, but when William and Steven were talking in the basement, it propelled the story effectively. The back-and-forth between Samantha and William was great. It was entertaining to read, funny, and it never felt like a series of one-liners. The children were engaging characters—bratty but likeable. You maintained verisimilitude--their unorthodox living arrangements did not seem forced or strange.

The ending felt unsatisfying. It did not resolve the central conflict of the story. The conflict comes late, as well. We do not encounter it until the seventh page, though the beginning pages were entertaining, and though William’s and Steven’s argument in the basement increased the tension, nothing ever happened with it—the climax of the story has nothing apparently obvious to do with the conflict. I also did not have a strong sense of place. While the descriptions were detailed (the knife wound was most excellently gristly), I did not get an understanding of what the house was really like, even though the house is important to the central theme of the story. It almost felt like this is the first part of a fifteen to twenty page story. The first six pages are engaging and introduce the characters well, and the last two pages reveal the conflict, and nothing was unnecessary. However, I am not sure what the burglary does for the story as is. It was suspenseful, but I did not fit with everything else going on. Will it make Steven want to move? Will it make William want to defend the family home?