From Grace

[Colin YNWA]

I hate it when writers say that 'You just don't get it' when you don't like their story. I've done enough research into the reading experience to understand that writing is a shared experience. If the reader 'Just doesn't get it' its cos the writer 'just ain't told them' in a way that reader can understand. Whatever the writer intends is nothing until a reader has read his work and placed their understanding on it and only then do you have a story. However in the case of 'From Grace'...

...I just don't get it.

Kurt Vonnegut is my favourite author but I always suspect when I've finished one of his books I've missed a whole load of subtext. They're still a joy to read with the bits I do 'get' but I suspect there's more in there. I kinda think that might be the case here.

On my reading this is an incredibly simple story were the title says it all really. Its lush to look at, a pleasure to read and constructed in a really interesting manner that alway kept me interested.

It's just that having finished I felt there must be more to it that I was missing. This didn't hamper my enjoyment of it but left the experience feeling a little empty.

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

I had the same experience when I gave it a reread several months ago. The strange thing thing is that the first time I read it I loved it. My only collusion is that it worker much better to read in several small chunks rather then one big one. With the smaller chunks you get time to reflect on each part rather then it as a whole.
I also want to mention how I loved how the colour changed depending what time in his life it was.   

[TordelBack]

It's a very fine piece of work, and beautiful to look at, but it's far too compressed.  It feels like the first Zenith Interlude, a burst of dense back-story to a narrative that  appears somewhere else, except that this goes on for episode after episode and then stops.  It's a pity, but it certainly saw both creators up their game which paid off in the future.