Response to "Baking Cookies"

“Baking Cookies” describes a mother’s abusive relationship with her son. The main character has a strong desire for his mother’s approval—he does not even think she is abusing him—and much of the story’s conflict revolves around their volatile domestic arrangement; the narrator’s father has left recently, and the family is being investigated by a social worker.

            For the most part, I like the dialogue. You convey a sense of dread well; even when they were only talking about confectionary sugar, I had a queasy feeling that something was not right. However, you do not overplay your hand—while I really wanted what was happening to stop happening, I never felt the urge to set down your story. And though the mother is monstrous, she is not a caricature. Her relationships with the main character, his father, and the social worker are developed. The main character is not an overly-innocent prototypical child, either. Is attitude that it is his job to protect his mother is an interesting one.

            I think emphasizing the conflict the main character suffers over his mother would be a good idea. He spends a lot of time rationalizing his mother’s abuse, but we do not see how it harms him. Is he confused when other adults do not behave in this fashion? Does his mother’s fixation with games leading to harm mean he cannot interact well with children? This would make him more complex, and you could raise the stakes of the story without being any more explicit than you already are. The dialogue at the end of the story feels a little forced, and does not emphasize the narrator’s realization that his mother was not the positive force that he thought she was. I’d also like to hear more about the father. It is ambiguous if he actually has the narrator’s best interests in mind, since it seems like he was abusive to the mother himself. This would also flesh out the characters more. Is the mother so obsessed with physical harm because her husband used to hit her?