I took a leisurely amount of time yesterday to read everything I had written so far. Despite earlier misgivings, I discovered that Sarah did NOT come across as critical and negative as assumed. While whiny, melodramatic and pessimistic, she balances these traits with a very dry sense of humor, keen pyschological observations and an appreciation for beautiful details.

I also worried about the style of this story. Unlike everything else I’ve ever written, this story digresses. As narrator, Sarah is constantly telling stories aside from the main one. Her digressions may be just a sentence long, but they usually run for paragraphs or even pages. I feared that her speechifying would kill the forward momentum of the plot.

Not so. In fact, Sarah’s stories seem to work to positive effect. Because she interprets even the simplest lines of dialog, you get a clear idea of how her mind works, what she desires and what her social world is like, though she is interacting with only a few characters. All of her stories contribute to the development of the cast and the situation so, in my view at least, they make her more sympathetic and more interesting.