Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Unfortunately, as the story progresses, the original characters and plot elements are slowly forgotten, making way for the introduction of new characters and situations tailored to present different social critiques...
...focus of the story does not even remain with the Constable. Instead, the plot takes another sharp turn, finally describing the events that occur at the bizarre home of Miss Midden and her eccentric relatives, the place where the Constable finally leaves Timothy to be found. Timothy, upon finally emerging from his drug-induced stupor, is rather implausibly and with little comment sent to live with a neighbor, with "piggychops" and his family left hanging. Even the Constable is left with inadequate closure after being largely ignored for the last portion of the novel...
...this haphazard approach to plot development, the storyline often hinders the progress of the novel instead of providing it with the structure that the book requires. The reader often wonders when characters, presented in detail early in the novel, will return in significant roles. Many of these characters reappear only briefly in largely inadequate attempts to end their presence in the story. Thus, the reader is left hanging in anticipation of a more satisfying conclusion...
...Sharpe had been able to include all of his characters throughout the story, or at the least to bring them all together in a significant manner at the end of the book, the convoluted plot could have been a highly effective means through which to present the chaos that the novel attempts to express in its final scenes. As the story stands, however, this feeling of lack of conclusion, when compounded over the entire work and never finally resolved, prevents the reader from absorbing the novel as a unified whole...
...result of this presence of well-crafted scenes in combination with a lack of effective cohesion between different elements of the story is that The Midden is a novel of moments, a collection of dryly humorous off-the-wall encounters between outrageous characters, embedded within a somewhat unsatisfying plot...