A story about a woman with a rough voice and a man who plays experimental music with a saw shows us that the more creative the storyline, the easier it is to build an intriguing story. The use of hindsight in this story was interesting. Mayra's ability to see where she was naive in her relationship with Gabe makes her a more charismatic character. I think that if she had been a character with less perspective and more hope she might come across as annoyingly blissful, but her self deprecation gives her more balance.
I thought that Elizabeth McCracken's descriptions of Mayra's outfit was well done. She describes the dress, gloves, lipstick, and eyelashes as haunted, which made me think Blue Velvet meets the thrift store.
I thought that at times Mayra was even humorous in her thoughts and narration. When she gets punched in the boob she writes, "A very strange place to take a punch. Not the worst place. I thought that as it happened: not the worst place to take a punch." I found myself laughing at this line, I guess I'm a sucker for repetition. I find myself doing this same thing in my own writing and have noticed a few other people in the class doing it too. It seems like a useful tool for inserting humor into tense situations.
I thought that the transition of Gabe may have been a little to abrupt, and I would have liked to have seen something earlier that indicated why things took a turn in the direction. I thought that McCracken's use of exposition to describe his new abusive tendencies to throw soft things at Mayra was less interesting than a scene depicting the same thing.
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