It wasn't until my third time through Grace Paley's "The Used Boy Raisers" that I finally was able to understand the dialogue. I've never been a big stickler on grammar but Paley's disregard for quotation marks really made the first two times reading the story difficult.
Moving on from the quotation mark conundrum I found Paley's story to be very unique and interesting. From the very start I was intrigued at the names she gave her two husbands, Livid and Pallid. To use livid and pallid as adjectives in one sentence and then make Livid and Pallid their names in the next was really interesting to me. I really enjoy how she did that.
The story's intensity really picks up when Pallid suggest sending the boys to a reading school in one of the Churches. Livid obviously has strong feelings against this and the ensuing dialogue is very intriguing.
I did not feel like the ending wrapped anything up for the reader. I found it to be very open ended. While this technique may work for Paley, I don't really feel like I would be comfortable finishing a story is such fashion.
No comments:
Post a Comment