Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life - Caroline Day

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marymary
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Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life - Caroline Day

Post by marymary »

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

I should have liked this book because it purports to be from the viewpoint of a young adult with memory and anger issues due to being born with foetal alcohol syndrome. Hope has been adopted but wants to write a memoir in order to find out why her birth mother abandoned her in a cardboard box just after she was born.

We first encounter Hope at a class for emerging writers because she has won a package as an underrepresented minority. Hope writes down things that she hears at the class to help her remember rules, writing exercises and the names and storylines of the other writers in the group.

The book is written like a stream of consciousness and the author uses repetition to show that Hope can’t remember telling us something already. Hope also struggles remembering the words for things. So far so okay. Where it falls down for me is that someone with memory difficulties can recall entire conversations with developed vocabulary with other people to tell the reader what has happened. The number one rule of writing group is to “Show Don’t Tell” and yet the first few chapters are entirely telling the reader what is happening.

I have abandoned the book but include this page to illustrate what I mean. It’s an odd mishmash of voices and isn’t authentic as far as I am concerned.
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F2D2D84F-FFB5-4F29-AD90-79EEFDBA52BD.png (131.28 KiB) Viewed 361 times
1/5
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Little John
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Re: Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life - Caroline Day

Post by Little John »

Sounds / reads like a cross between "the curios incident" and "catcher in the rye"
Yes this is the real "Little John" (or it could be "colin")
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Leigh
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Re: Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life - Caroline Day

Post by Leigh »

Sounds like a good book to read if you are a student learning how to write. Provided, that you realise that the book is a required text being a good case in point! ;)
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