Review of Sean Woznicki, “Piece by Piece”, Syntax and Salt 4, 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal
I’m not even sure what to say about this work. I’m the type that hates questions left unanswered, and this short story leaves way too many for my taste. There’s not even a suggestion of why the events in the story happen. Is it because of the woman? Is that why he loses nothing when he spends the night at his own home? If it’s the woman though, wouldn’t this be something she knew to look out for? Wouldn’t she be less horrified at finding his eyes?
I mean, in the beginning, she was entirely too blasé about the toe and the finger, and even the tongue, so I suspected it was entirely her fault, and that she knew about it. But her reaction to the eyes threw me. Perhaps her reaction is supposed to throw the audience, but it still doesn’t give you any answers.
Overall, for me, the story was frustrating because of the lack of answers, and hard to enjoy. It might’ve been different if we were at least given a reason to care about what was going on, but we aren’t even given that.
Oh well, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Hopefully others will enjoy it more than I did. At least it wasn’t badly written. It just wasn’t to my taste.
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