Damn. If I had to describe this story in one word, I would sound like Chris Tucker in Friday, "Damn." The way that Boyle transitions from a story about the naive love of a young couple, into a self-destructive tragedy of misguided youth. I thought that the exposition of the character's thoughts was effective and stood out as Boyle's tool of character development. When Jeremy tries to draw up the image of, "China, the love of his life- and he couldn't, what did she look like? What was her face like..." this is the perfect set up for China's betrayal that comes in the next paragraph. When Boyle shows the reader that the distance between China and Jeremy has grown to the extent that the two are no longer real to each other, it allows for a smooth transition into China's turn against Jeremy.
The other extremely useful device that Boyle uses is description. "...And when the baby came out, the baby girl all slick with blood and mucus and the lumped white stuff that was like something spilled at the bottom of a garbage can." Her description of the birth/afterbirth scene is so stomach churning that I winced as I read it. Especially the later part of the sentence where he describes the placenta or the "lumped white stuff" and how it "spilled at the bottom of a garbage can,"I couldn't help but to imagine China as the metaphorical trash can. I found that use of metaphor to be on time for what I felt had to have been going on in Jeremy's head at that point in their relationship. I thought this story was addictive and fast paced.
It is very fast paced -- it has to cover about a year's worth of time, which is a lot for a short story -- usually a couple of days is the time span. Boyle uses a lot of summary instead of dramatization and skips ahead in time a lot. Good analysis of how he uses thought as characterization.
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