Review of Ironing
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Joanna Booth
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- Latest Review: Ironing by Navajo
Review of Ironing
[Following is a volunteer review of "Ironing" by Navajo.]
Ironing by Navajo is an exploration of a range of characters' lives set in London. These are the inner city people we see on the bus or pass on the street. There is a wide range of characters starting with three girls on a bus heading to see a greyhound race, a teacher at a college, students outside the college, a social care worker who lets us into the life of one of her cases.
The stories are powerful whether brief or more detailed. I found the case of the abused child, whose world the case worker lets us into, one of the most emotional, clear and painful ones.
The scenes are snippets of life. Some scenes are very brief while others carry on through most of the story. The three girls on the bus take up a lot of space in the narrative. I'm not sure they are the most interesting characters but that could be a quirk of the writing style.
There are many issues with dialogue formatting and picking the right type of language. There is a real lack of appropriate new paragraphs, and some inconsistent logic.
For example, there is one scene where Samira, who it turns out is one of the sisters of one of the girls on the bus, is talking to her parents to tell them she is getting married. She is meant to be on the phone with her mum but her dad is also talking to her from across the room. We are not told whether the call is on speaker phone or not.
The author occasionally gets too emotional in the writing so it feels like we are being told what is happening rather than being shown it. Characters know what other characters are feeling all the time, which doesn't feel real. Each character can only know what they know. We are not mind readers as people or characters.
There are quite basic editing issues, which a good editor could deal with quite easily so as not to distract from the quality of the story.
The writing includes profanity, as you would expect from the cast of characters in inner-city London. There is drug use and abuse but it mostly deals with trying to understand the contradictory and disturbing day-to-day reality we all face. This story is for older readers.
If I ran a publishing house or chose screenplays for Netflix, I'd be on the phone to Navajo to pick up the options for this story. I stayed up until 2 am to read it.
Ignore the formatting and editing. This is a story worth reading. Actually, it's many stories worth reading. I'm hoping there's a follow-up.
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars. There were quite a few issues with the writing, which needed to be overcome so I could read the story as it was intended to be read. New characters weren't introduced properly, we were just given their names, and it needs to be professionally edited.
******
Ironing
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Ironing by Navajo is an exploration of a range of characters' lives set in London. These are the inner city people we see on the bus or pass on the street. There is a wide range of characters starting with three girls on a bus heading to see a greyhound race, a teacher at a college, students outside the college, a social care worker who lets us into the life of one of her cases.
The stories are powerful whether brief or more detailed. I found the case of the abused child, whose world the case worker lets us into, one of the most emotional, clear and painful ones.
The scenes are snippets of life. Some scenes are very brief while others carry on through most of the story. The three girls on the bus take up a lot of space in the narrative. I'm not sure they are the most interesting characters but that could be a quirk of the writing style.
There are many issues with dialogue formatting and picking the right type of language. There is a real lack of appropriate new paragraphs, and some inconsistent logic.
For example, there is one scene where Samira, who it turns out is one of the sisters of one of the girls on the bus, is talking to her parents to tell them she is getting married. She is meant to be on the phone with her mum but her dad is also talking to her from across the room. We are not told whether the call is on speaker phone or not.
The author occasionally gets too emotional in the writing so it feels like we are being told what is happening rather than being shown it. Characters know what other characters are feeling all the time, which doesn't feel real. Each character can only know what they know. We are not mind readers as people or characters.
There are quite basic editing issues, which a good editor could deal with quite easily so as not to distract from the quality of the story.
The writing includes profanity, as you would expect from the cast of characters in inner-city London. There is drug use and abuse but it mostly deals with trying to understand the contradictory and disturbing day-to-day reality we all face. This story is for older readers.
If I ran a publishing house or chose screenplays for Netflix, I'd be on the phone to Navajo to pick up the options for this story. I stayed up until 2 am to read it.
Ignore the formatting and editing. This is a story worth reading. Actually, it's many stories worth reading. I'm hoping there's a follow-up.
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars. There were quite a few issues with the writing, which needed to be overcome so I could read the story as it was intended to be read. New characters weren't introduced properly, we were just given their names, and it needs to be professionally edited.
******
Ironing
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Ironing by Navajo
