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A review by sarahkorn
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Beautiful and sad. I was personally not bothered by the lack of a twist/ah hah moment, that is not a prerequisite for good fiction in my opinion (maybe if the writing is bad, but Amanda Peters' is not). It perfectly embodied this passage:
“The dash saddens me…It doesn’t allow for all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name…sometimes a photo…giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.”
Even though the ending was clear from the start, reading Joe and Norma's dashes felt so meaningful and special.
“The dash saddens me…It doesn’t allow for all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name…sometimes a photo…giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.”
Even though the ending was clear from the start, reading Joe and Norma's dashes felt so meaningful and special.