Cole Eady "Secret Park"

The narrator of this piece is an overweight, not quite middle-aged man who has met back up with some of his old high school buddies with the intentions of getting into shape. His habitual lack of exercise and smoking make this a very daunting task, but he puts forth his best effort regardless. What struck me most about this piece was the contrast of characters. In the foreground, the narrator stands alone as the out of shape and out of place figure in the threesome. He is accentuated by Sean and James, two fit and seemingly successful men. I thought this combination of personalities and physicalitys worked nicely together, creating a kind of inherent tension between all of them. As always, I looked for the central arc or change in the story, but this time I am not sure I was able to pin one down.

            I liked a lot of the moments and descriptions in this piece. Beginning with the opening lines about there being a park with no sign or discernible marking of any kind was a good attention-grabber. I really wanted more to happen with this fact, however. By the end, I felt like the story had more to do with the people in the park than the park or its condition, so I might suggest trying to work that aspect back into the central theme somehow. I also really liked the line about fathers’ apathy towards their daughters’ exclamations about butter flies; I thought that was a really funny, ironic statement to make. My biggest problem with this story is that I felt like it stopped short of where it was supposed to end. A lot of what is on the page right now is working and is interesting, but I felt like things stopped just as things were getting good. I wanted to see the interactions between the three characters on the way to the hospital, in the hospital, and possibly at James’ funeral. I think a lot is going for this story already, but some expansion would be suggestion of mine.