Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tempo, fervor and construction, the piece resembles rock video. There is little plot and less sequence: it is hard to distinguish the present from the profuse flashbacks, yet it doesn't seem to matter. This may not be a cohesive play, but Frank Pugliese, 29, has the distinctive voice and emotive power of a true playwright. His unifying theme is race. Before the action begins, the boys have fatally stomped a black man who invaded their turf to buy a sandwich. They seem capable of redemption: the brightest (Adrian Pasdar) falls passionately if shamefacedly for a black woman (Cynthia Martells...
...incisive because he addresses the issue which lurks at the back of every mind. Black Dogs challenges us to confront the tension we all feel in the meeting of science and religion, the rational and the irrational. McEwan crafts the work subtly, weaving the same uncertainty through prose and plot. But he does not resolve that uncertainty. In the end he has no answer to his own question...
McNally forges a complicated, interlocking structure of relationships. By the end of the book, the initial shock of the suicide has spread through the network of characters and dissipated. The plot appears a mechanical process, divorced from the actions of those whom it surrounds. McNally creates no rapport between the story and the subjects, no common development of scope and substance. The narrative never takes off, never generates its own momentum, never grows--it just plays itself...
McNally's prose undermines his work. In an overly naturalistic tone, ideas tumble out, one after another, unordered, unexplained. Each sentence yields another non sequitur. This style has its merit. He captures perfectly the inarticulateness of human psychology. The helplessness of the characters, the half hearted flailing of the plot, and the unfathomable morass of the prose are expressive and poignant. But they do not make a novel; they do not satisfy the reader...
Until Your Heart Stops gets caught in its own trap. McNally employs a simple naturalistic style in his prose and plot which loses itself in the maze it seeks to depict. He creates a world so true to life in its senselessness that the audience finds it meaningless. Its premise of the book is McNally wants to teach us that we cannot be taught...