Feedback
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Reviews
ABNA Expert Reviewer
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
This writer has a curious style – at once childish and yet descriptive. Since it is coming from another culture, I came to appreciate the choppiness of the prose after a few paragraphs. The allegories were fun.
What aspect needs the most work?
Overall, I found the language to be perhaps a bit TOO simple and childish, and feel the author needs to revisit their story for some editing and tightening up of the story without losing any of the essential English-as-a-second-language flavor.
What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
I found myself surprised that I liked it and found the story engaging. The author writes in a kind of pidgin English that is easy to understand and also very charming.
ABNA Expert Reviewer
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
The story takes place in an unfamiliar environment, the most impoverished province in India (Uttar Pradesh). This draws the reader in, because the reader will be interested in strange cultural practices and strange traditions.
What aspect needs the most work?
The narrative reads: "Brahmin food is pure vegetarian and varied. There is Dal(pulses), Kadhi,(a kind of soup) Chappatis,(Bread)" I recommend that each of these foods be expanded to an entire paragraph. The writer could desribe the fragrance and color and method of preparation (boiling for three hours, baking for ten minutes) for each of these foods. By not pausing to describe the foods, the author has missed an opportunity for providing interesting writing. Also, when we read the character "Suryanavshi," I suggest that the author devote a sentence or two describing how to pronounce this name, and to describe alternate pronunciations, and to describing similar names in India. By not pausing to focus on this name, or on the origin of this name, the author has lost an opportunity for providing some interesting writing.
What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
This story is refreshing among most of the samples provided by Amazon.com, in that it is easy to understand what is going on, despite the unfamiliar environment of the present story (a remote province in India). In other words, in most of the stories provided by Amazon.com, the authors clutter up the narratives of ordinary, prosaic events, by plunging into details about the weather, or about exaggerated emotions, or about irrelevant things, like traffic. But the present story, about India, does NOT suffer from these problems. Although the prose does seem to be written by an amateur-author, the author writes clearly and it is easy for the reader to see that a genuine story is being developed. I would have liked the author to have added more bizarre customs from India, for example (this is my own made-up example), animal sacrifice. I know, for example, that 150 years ago in India they had human sacrifice in a practice called, "Satti." Therefore, I would expect some bizarre practices to still be in practice in India, and I would have liked to have seen them integrated into this story///////////////////(End of Review)
Manohar Bhatia comments on the reviews:::::;
I do appreciate ABNA reviewers.The first reviewer said that he is surprised at my childish writing and yet likes reading my excerpt.He is impressed by the overall opinion of the excerpt and found the story engaging......I found I have scored here.Although I write pidgin English, but still he found it very charming.
The second reviewer says that although the story is set in the most improvished province of India(Uttar Pradesh),still this reviewer feels will draw the reader in ,so that he can know strange cultural practices and traditions.Overall,he found the story refreshing among other samples sent on amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment