Glimpse

Glimpse, by Carol Williams. is a story in blank verse about the struggles a young girl faces in the aftermath of her sister's attempted suicide. This Crank-like novel is the book I so adamantly encouraged to the class, and I was, I admit, a little caught up in the moment as I told you about this book. While Glimpse is really good, no doubt, the reason I was so excited to share this novel is that I had never read one of the same genera before. Let me explain. This novel is aimed at pre-teenage to teenage girls, I got that as I was reading the book. But this being the first female young adult novel I had read, I got... caught up in the moment. I had never experienced this kind of writing before, and with the new diction and types of tension. Therefore, I had gotten way too excited about talking about what wasn't new, or what didn't have an original plot.

This doesn't mean that this isn't a good book, no way. I still hold by the compliments I gave to the book. Blank verse, especially, was something I think the book hit dead on. The idea of blank verse is to give the writing a more uneducated feel to it, that the writing almost comes purely from the heart and soul of the writer. However, a lot of books take too many liberties in writing in blank verse, assuming that the originality points for the style would make up for poor writing. You need to get the timing of the writing just right, and then drop down to the next line.

For example:

I talked to my sister

and she said

that I was taking too long

on the computer.

While this was a simplistic example, and probably not a very good one, the idea is that the poetry tell the story, and the story supplements the poetry. They build on one another. And this is the best thing in the novel, in my opinion. But, to quote a cheesy 80's reading program, you don't have to take my word for it.