Week 7: Analytical
Meet Cute by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Dhonielle Clayton, Katie Cotugno, Katharine McGee, Kass Morgan, Meredith Russo, Sara Shepard, Nicola Yoon,Ibi Zoboi, Julie Murphy, Jocelyn Davies, Nina LaCour, Emery Lord.
Finished
Nicola Yoon is one of the best writers that I have come across. Her short story, The Department of Dead Love in the book Meet Cute is something special. The short story is about breakups and Yoon uses many similies to express what happens. The main character Thomas is still heartbroken over his break up 10 months ago. Thomas gets a relationship autopsy with the help of Gabrielle Lee, the girl who would perform the autopsy. He hoped to get a "do over" which would erase the past ten months of his and his ex-girlfriend, Sammantha's, life and reset the relationship. Both of them would forget the department of dead love exists and forget the entire process. By the end of the story, Thomas decides to not go through with the do-over because he didn't want to forget. He didn't want to forget Gabrielle especially because he had feelings for her. Gabrielle and Thomas end up together in the end and the story ends on a positive note.
Yoon's short story was a true masterpiece. Her idea for the story was amazing and she also used lots of imagery to help the reader visualize. One of the first places she describes is the department itself. She says how it was not a dark place like most people may expect. She describes it as being a "beautiful campus"(291). There are many buildings there for different purposes. The first one she describes is the "unrequited love building". She says how it is the color of spilled lavender tea and shaped like a wave. I believe she describes it this way to explain how its not a very intense heartbreak but it builds up over time, similar to a wave. The next building mentioned is breakups. It is described as orange and almost looks like it is exploding. She may be referring to how breakups are chaos and often sudden. Another building is the bereavement building. It is described as "a periwinkle blue lily at dusk" (292). The last building mentioned is young love. She describes this one as the prettiest of all. It is green and shaped like a blade of grass. Young love is separated from the other buildings and is only intended for people 18 and younger. This building is more general because it includes all of the other topics as well. Yoon's similies and imagery really add to the story.
I feel like many of Yoon's similies were very accurate. I, myself, have experienced most of these before and found that the short story really appealed to me. After reading a few of Nicola Yoon's books I have come to love her writing style. Yoon knows how to pull the reader into the story very well.
I think that's really cool. Where did you find the short story? How come you didn't include the pages of it on your reading list for this week?
ReplyDeleteThat picture above on the left with the buildings...where is that?
The short story is in Meet Cute and I finished reading it the day before but i still wanted to write about it. I started reading The beginning of Everything on wednesday night.
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