Author: VINCENT ZANDRI
Review Requested & Book provided by Bri Clark
Review: Zandri is not an author who minces his words. Love at First Sight is hard-hitting , and for the most part, melancholy.
While it is understandable that any injured soldier forcibly returning from duty finds it hard to adjust to life, regardless of the reason, the author’s examination of a soldier’s reaction’s to ‘sometime’ blindness is vivid enough, but then he takes you into the emotional impact this has, not only on his protagonist but on his fiancée too. This is not a soothing read, nor has the author maximised the length of his story.
When you have a seventeen page limit, there is no room for repetition, even when used for emphasis. On a couple of occasions there were questionable word choices that pulled me out of the story while I pondered whether it was a typo, poor editing or the author reaching for a word to ‘shock’ or attract attention. The author’s time-line switch from one paragraph to the next from rising tensions between the engaged couple to not quite, but almost ‘sweetness-and-light’ was a bit disconcerting.
As someone who has worked with the blind, I found Zandri’s insight to the emotional impact on his protagonist very compassionate and insightful. His extension to include his fiancée’s struggle to come to terms with the changed situation she finds herself in is realistic. And like the author’s protagonist, I found her shadowy.
Love at First Sight may be very short, seventeen pages, but its impact will remain for some time after the story is finished.
No comments:
Post a Comment