Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship, by Mabell S. C. Smith [part 1 of 3]

This is a book review post. Normally, people choose books that they enjoyed to review. I have chosen a book that I don't like. At all. It is an old book, and you've probably never heard of it. My mother recommended it to me, saying that she remembered it fondly from her childhood. Well, sorry, Mom, but I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. Or do more than barely get started.

Lest you start complaining that I can't review a book that I haven't even read, I will say that I agree. That should be a rule, but I am making an exception. Sadly, I am afraid that the writing is far from exceptional. (By which I mean "exceptionally good.") Take this not as a review of the book itself, as in the plot, but about what not to do. What turned me off from it right away.

And now, the review begins.

Well, not yet. First a disclaimer: this book is in the public domain (as far as I can tell) as it was written in the thirties, and all the content is available on Project Gutenberg. And my apologies to the author.

A book should grab you at the beginning. The first sentences are often called a "hook", as they, if properly written, draw the reader, like a fish on a line, into the world and characters of the book. Sadly, in Ethel Morton, this is just not the case. The first few paragraphs are so badly written that my twelve-year-old brother laughed when I read it two him. Hysterically. He knows about all these mistakes, and only uses them satirically. 

"It's up to Roger Morton to admit that there's real, true romance in the world after all," decided Margaret Hancock as she sat on the Mortons' porch one afternoon a few days after school had opened in the September following the summer when the Mortons and Hancocks had met for the first time at Chautauqua. 

Did you check back to see that that is one sentence? Did you count the words? I did! The first sentence of EM is fifty-six words long and terribly convoluted. There are some long sentences, in good writing, that are clear, that work well. But those are rare. And it is not the case this time.

Let's have a look at all that we are told in this first sentence.

1. The full names of two characters: Roger Morton, Margaret Hancock
2. That they are sitting on the Morton's porch
3. It is a September afternoon
4. It is a few days after the first day of school
5. That the Mortons and Hancocks had met the previous summer
6. That they met at Chautauque

Does the reader need to know all this, and Margaret's comment, in the first sentence of a novel? I don't think so. But it gets worse, as you will see in the next two posts.