Respone to "Chase"

“Chase” is about Caroline and her eponymous boyfriend, who are each dealing with their contraction of herpes. Throughout the story, Chase is presented as both benign and thoroughly stupid, while Caroline, the narrator, seems to be the more responsible of the pair. However, by the end of the story, we discover there is a spiteful element to her character made worse by her struggle with her situation.

            Even though Caroline seems to be more level-headed than Chase, she is capable of incredible malice. I like it. It adds depth to her character, and makes her and Chase’s relationship more complex. She is not simply the long-suffering girlfriend of a dumb lug. And your story does not have the reverse problem, where the man puts up with a termagant girlfriend. I like that Chase is more than a source of stupidity. Though he seems destructive and careless in the beginning of the story, by the end we see that he is a better person than Caroline.  The characters’ personalities are communicated really well. I particularly liked when Caroline calls Chase “such a puss” and when she names the zombies as a distraction. The part where she cannot hold his hand during her tattooing was telling of both their personalities.  You did a good job of communicating information naturally. I never felt like there was too much summary or the dialogue had too much explanation.  I alos liked the framing device of the meeting in the diner—is that influence from Tarantino?

            Some of your writing is a bit hard to understand, such as when you describe the “obviously new blonde waitress” or the tattoo parlor “the size of a closet sandiwiched between a Mexican grocer and a tanning/beauty salon”. Many of the scene changes are jarring. I liked the snake flashback, but the transitions are sudden and it often took me a sentence or so to figure out where the action was taking place.

            While I liked Caroline’s mean streak, it took me bu surprise. Hinting at her capacity for cruelty earlier in the story might help. 

Looking over my post, I realized that I forgot to mention that this story is really funny.