I recently finished the reading assignment for Abducted By Circumstance by David Madden, and I decided to write my reading response on that. This book is one interesting piece of literature. When I first started reading, I was excited...the outside jacket quotes said that this book was going to be a crime story and was supposed to be really intriguing...but as I started to read, I became more and more confused with who was talking. There are moments when there is an outside narrator talking and then within that same paragraph, Carol will be talking to Glenda. I find it very interesting when Carol talks to Glenda, because, obviously Glenda isn't there standing in front of Carol. Carol is literally talking to herself and pretending to know what Glenda would say. It makes me wonder why Carol is taking such an interest in getting to know Glenda. It cannot be just because she witnessed the abduction. I feel there is a deeper reason...and I think that Madden touches on that in the last part of chapter five. Carol has been abducted by her life and she really wants to save herself. But, I really like the quote on page 116 where Carol says "I have these feelings of guilt about you, Glenda. Like when I catch myself feeling that you are intruding. I have my own life to live, but you keep getting between me and it. The harder I try to keep you alive, the more I feel my own life, such as it is, slip away." This quote kind of makes it seem that Carol wants to save both herself and Glenda, but in the end she can only save one.
The other thing I noticed while reading is that Melissa is not the typical six year old daughter. She has characteristics of an adult. To me, the way she talks and acts sounds more mature and more adult like than her mother. I think this could be because Melissa knows that her mom is kind of losing her mind, and she takes it upon herself to help her mother figure out what happened to Glenda and therefore kind of be Carol's mother as well as her daughter. It reflects upon Carol's life because she herself never really had a mother, and it seems like Melissa doesn't really have one as well.
This is one difficult book to read, but I hope that it gets better because even though it is confusing, it is quite interesting and I want to be able to connect all the pieces together in the end.
Yes, and you also want to be looking at it from our "carpenter's perspective": how is it built? What lumber is necessary? How are the windows attached? Where are the load-bearing walls? Read it as if you needed to pull technique from it. Read it with the eye not of a reader (who might be passive and interested in the entertainment) but as a writer (who wants to steal some tricks). You're not the fan watching the swimming race. You're the athlete, and you want to be as good as those swimmers on television. Learn their moves.
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