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

Here is the last badly-written section that I will critique in these posts:

"I wish she could grow as plump as Della Watkins."

"I saw Tom Watkins yesterday," said James.

"What was a haughty New Yorker doing on the Jersey side of the Hudson?"

"It seems he boards Cupid and his family at the Rosemont Kennels—you know they're half way between here and Glen Point. He was going to call on them."

"Dear Cupid!" laughed Margaret, recalling the bulldog's alarming face which ill agreed with his mild name and general behavior. "Let's go over to the Kennels and see him some day."

"His wife is named Psyche," went on James, "and they have two pups named Amor and Amorette."

"I should think Cupid's puppy would be the funniest little animal on earth," roared Roger. "Never, never shall I forget the day old Cupe ran away with his market wagon," and he kicked his legs with enthusiasm.

 Look at that third sentence of the last quotation. Another information dump, this time in miniature. That is not how people talk in real life! And if it is not how people talk in real life, it has no place in realistic fiction. Tom comes back into the story later, so it would not be hard to show that he is haughty. Show, don't tell. That's the advice that all good writers give.  A normal person would say, I suppose, "What was he doing there?" 

Right after that, there's more unnecessary information! (No surprise there.) Why does the reader need to know the name of the kennels where a yet-unknown character boards his dogs? We still don't know much of anything about the four children sitting on the porch! And we still don't know about the immediate family of most of the cast. But we do know the names of a family of four bulldogs. 

Well, I could go on and on about this book. But I will close with one more thought: it bothers me that two of the characters are named Ethel Blue Morton* and Ethel Brown Morton. It does, however, raise an interesting question-- which Ethel is the eponymous one? Or is it both? I'd probably know if I read the whole book.** But I don't want to.

* Interestingly, there is a substance called methyl blue, a stain.

**Or "all the books in the series." I was disturbed to discover that there are at least five books in the Ethel Morton series. 

Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship, by Mabell S. C. Smith [part 2 of 3]

I will begin this second part of the review with the second sentence of EM.

James and Margaret had trolleyed over to see Roger and Helen from Glen Point, about three quarters of an hour's ride from Rosemont where the Mortons lived.

OK, that's not a terrible sentence. But, honestly, we know nothing important about these characters yet. Yes, we have that first long sentence, which tells a lot. But none of the information makes any difference in this part of the novel. Do we need to know, in the first two sentences of a novel, where two of the characters live, where two other characters live, and where they met?

"Roger's ready to admit it," confessed that young man.

If we ignore that awkward speech tag, it's not bad. But the next sentence is so terrible. It was painful to read.

 "When you have an aunt drop right down on your door mat, so to speak, after your family has been hunting her for twenty years, and when you find that you've been knowing her daughter, your own cousin, pretty well for two months it does make the regular go-to-school life that you and I used to lead look quite prosy."

Not only is that sentence too long, but it is even more confusing than the first sentence. This is an information dump, people. That means that too much information is given at the beginning of a story. There are many ways to introduce backstory in a novel. It's hard to think of a worse method than the one employee here: to have someone tell a friend about it in one long sentence. All right, there is one worse way-- to have Roger start by saying, "as you know..." before the dump.

And now is the time to talk about speech tags. You know "he said", "she said". Don't use them if you can avoid it, and, when you do, you should almost always use either "said" or "asked." I know all the arguments. That it's boring, repetitive, not descriptive enough. For the majority of my life I have been over-using speech tags. What caused me to stop? The general consensus of "real" writers is that it brands a writer as amateur and is annoying to read. 

Here is my little list of speech tags and things used as speech tags (names mostly excluded for brevity and convenience) from this 2100-word chapter, in the order in which they appear.* 

decided, confessed. suggested, concluded, said, went on, continued, carried on the story, guessed, said, and Roger nodded his head gleefully, said, remarked, said, laughed recalling the bulldog's alarming face which ill agreed with his mild name and general behavior, went on, roared, and he kicked his legs with enthusiasm, asked, said, suggested, approved, assented, James completed the sentence for her, a voice came through the screen door, declared, responded seriously, commented, asserted suddenly, interposed quickly, explained to the new arrivals, approved, inquired, announced, asked, commended, quoted, sighed, agreed, decided, commented, retorted, threatened, said somewhat sharply, begged, continued, exclaimed, defended her idea, retorted, said magnanimously, retorted
Wow. I didn't count the number of different speech tags, but feel free to do so and tell me. 

Apart from the tags, we learn about an aunt, an uncle, and a grandfather, but there is little about the people who I assumed to be main characters. The dialogue also just feels awkward to me. But the worst part is the randomness of what they say. And the introduction of more and more characters. known mostly by name alone, when there is no character development of the main characters.

 In the first chapter!

*That should be a colon, not a period, but I didn't want to make any of the sentences I wrote in this post longer than the quotations! If you don't count the paragraph where I listed the speech tags, I think I succeeded.

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.