March 12th, 2012 at 03:11am
First! I really love the picture you've used for the story, it really does give off the 'old town' vibe, the cobbled open area and just the looks of the buildings; and maybe even because of the colouring of the picture? I don't know, but it's such a lovely picture. :)
Chapter One
Erica treats it as if it was her first-born, but the typewriter can’t transverse decades and adapt to them like a human can. It’s stuck in the 1930s. - I really like the description here; it's really neat how you have the narrator describe it as if it were a newborn and then reinforce the idea that it's from the 1930's and thus cannot possibly be 'new' in the sense of 'new-born' or that it doesn't have the potential to grow as such. It's just a really nice description of old vs. new.
I told her it wasn’t very fitting to write futuristic dystopian fiction on a machine that lived through the Blitz, but she just looked at me as if I didn’t understand her at all. - this is also quite neat, because here you could agree with the voice of the female rather than the male; the dystopian all about machines and stuck in places you can't get out of (kind of related back to the idea presented in the last paragraph, almost?) :)
The buildings on our street are soot-dusted Baronial masterpieces, with turrets on the roof to guard people’s third-floor castles. - in this sentence there's that lovely contrast between the word 'masterpieces' and 'castles' that evoke this image of beautiful buildings belonging to a certain age that are just absolutely spectacular, but there's the soot-dusted aspect to them which, again, reinforces this idea of the old and that they're not maybe as well-kept or anything; left to grow old as new architecture leads the way in a sense. :)
I really like all the description in this chapter, it's just so wonderful to read. :) I like how the narrator seems critical of the 'new' side of town compared to the old and how all the old treasures of the past seem to be forgotten about or are treated with lesser importance regardless of what they once meant (like the once-homes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Walter Scott). And I like how the old town aspect is depicted as more homely and inviting compared to the sharpness of the new. It's just interesting with the contrasts. But it's wonderfully written. :)
The imagery is beautiful, and I feel like I am there, listening to the typewriter. I like how you describe the typewriter, and how it seemed to contrast with the dystopian novel she was writing.
In addition, I like the descriptions of the Old Town, and how you said walking over the South Bridge takes you a hundred years forward in time.
Stories like this are why I read others’ work on mibba, so vivid in their descriptions and a pleasure to read. I really like the last two lines; how Erica incorporated the beggar’s words into the novel when the narrator looked at the paper in the typewriter.
A very nice piece of work, very fun to read.