Title: In These Pieces – a 9/11 Short Story
Author: Sean McDevitt
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: September 8, 2016
Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary
Length: 22 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 Stars
Blurb:
A visitor to the 9/11 Memorial in New York City does exactly what a tour guide tells him NOT to do; the result is an unexpected insight at the heart of a dark tragedy.
Content Warning: references to 9/11, grief, terrorism, and deep regret.
Review:
Remembrance is for everyone.
It makes me smile when authors write stories about characters while sharing as few details about them as possible. I never knew basic information about this protagonist like their name, age, race, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, or other common identifiers that might be used to introduce someone to an audience, and yet I still felt as thought I might recognize them if I passed them on the street. Their passion for history and New York was so strong that I could imagine the joy on their face as they visited their favorite spots there and soaked in all of the sights they had never seen in person before. That is not an easy thing to accomplish, but it sure makes the reading experience better.
While I do not expect as much plot and character development in short stories as I do for longer works, I needed more of both of these things here. The final scene ended without wrapping up some important questions I had about why the narrator behaved the way they did and how the spirit world deals with terrible acts of injustice that cannot be otherwise remedied. This is something I’m saying as a reader who liked the premise and storyline in general and would have loved to give it a higher rating. There was a lot of good material here, but it needed more development in my opinion.
With that being said, there was a strong sense of justice in this tale that I found satisfying. I can’t go into too much detail on this subject without sharing spoilers, but this is definitely something to check out if you’re in the mood for characters to feel the repercussions of their choices in life and learn lessons about the things they have done that were not helpful or kind. Sometimes it’s nice to dig into fiction that has such a strong correlation between actions and consequences in its world building as those are not always necessarily things one can easily or reliably find in the real world.
In These Pieces – a 9/11 Short Story was interesting.