Alice and Death by Lisa

Thank you - although I wasn't aware of the Finnish connection, I'll have to explore that! I did research different words for Death while picking his name and used Tuoni as I liked how it sounded. Admittedly, I can't remember which language as I wrote it months ago...

I would have missed this had it not been flagged up, and, wow, what a great read, I was captivated by it, hoping the ending would be as good as the content, and it was. Such an original idea. I really enjoyed this!

http://www.abctales.com/lisa_hinsley/alice_and_death Reading this, I couldn't help but feel that there was something a bit, well, pedestrian. I was scratching my head trying to work out why the excitement of the ideas wasn't being matched by the story itself and then it hit me: Having Death explain things in alternate paragraphs takes the mystery out of the story. I think it's fundamental to this story to capture the mystery of the Death figure. It seems to me that the female character seems to treat him in a bit of a matter of fact way, which make this lonely gatherer of souls a bit mundane, as if worked for the council collecting souls. Removing the paragraphs with death explaining leaves the story with a big hole in it, though. If it was me writing this story, I'd increase the amount of dialogue between the women and Tuoni, because there's loads of scope for brilliant stuff to be said between a mortal woman and an immortal reaper of souls. Also, I'd love to 'see' the farce of the hospice, with people dying when she nips out for a fag or a wee. Rather than it happening, with the character telling me about it as it happened 'off screen' I want to see it happen. What do the female characters colleagues make of it? Do any of them notice? I suppose what I would like to see from this is being shown things happening rather than hearing about them later through a character. For instance, when she is run over there really isn't too much drama or action, it just kind of happens. Without any of this stuff, the story feels a little bit cold and dead to me. (boom boom!) Hope this helps! Cheers, Mark Brown, Editor, www.ABCtales.com

Thanks for the help, I'll take it on board. I guess what I was trying to do was to make death more human, or maybe once human, and to show his confusion as he tried to understand emotions once again. As for Alice, she was a young woman, and also in love. To her, she could see Tuoni as she could everyone else, whether he was a 'big player' in the grand scheme of things was simply something she couldn't care less about. She just wanted to love him. I look over the story again, but I feel it could turn into a book if I start expanding. Lisa

I liked it too; captures the sadness of loss very well and the ending's quite engaging. Anybody trying to personify death post-Terry Pratchett has got a hard task! Only minor niggle for me was the repitition of "raven-haired beauty" which is a little bit cliched.

Neil, My husband also flagged up the 'raven-haired beauty'. But I ignored him! :) Glad you liked it otherwise. Lisa

I also had problems with the 'raven-haired beauty' thing... but then how else do you describe such a thing???

Woman of asian descent, but then it doesn't have the same ring, does it?! Lisa

Hmm, not really... :-/