[Mrs. Y Reviews] The Birthday by Ashley Barron

Book Cover via Amazon.com

As I approach my middle age, or so that’s what I’m told what I am near, I find myself wishing I could stop and take a pause. If I can pause my movies, how come it is we do not have a pause button on life? Today’s review is a book that isn’t a pause on life, nor is it about how to pause it, but it represents a moment in time that is to be treasured. So, get your gold earrings on, make sure your son understands that you love him, and be sure that you are not late for the theater. Today I’m reviewing “The Birthday, A Short Story” by Ashley Barron. 

Opinion

Welcome to Monday, everyone!  I decided to pick another book out of the “Mrs. Y Wants to read this personally” section of my ‘to be read’ pile. Today is a short story I have been eying since Goodreads decided to recommend it to me on every moment that I logged in for like two weeks. I think Goodreads is starting to understand me. So much so this book fits everything I love about books.

This is a short story novel that has a bit of everything for a mom like me. It shows what is, what was, and what could be, and thus for my first impressions, I was seriously impressed. As I mentioned earlier, this is a glimpse of a life, a memory, and one I can relate to well.

Let’s go into the critiques of my reviews, and my first critique comes from the “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation,” portion of my scoring. In this case, it’s not what I normally would point out it’s one of the few times I’ve ever had to critique this. The issue I found in this story was that there was no indenting of paragraphs. There isn’t a single one in the entire short story. However, that being said, there are many eyes resting treats all over this story, so I want to jump right into what I love about “The Birthday.”

In this part of the review, let me start my song of praise with how BEAUTIFUL the margins, space between paragraphs, the flow of the words and structure of the page is on an e-reader. It’s as if someone said “Hey, what would Mrs. Y want?” and did everything I love for an e-book copy. I mean seriously aside from the indenting, this is almost perfect. I’ve never seen an e-story this close to perfect in awhile when it comes to the way the copy reads from device to device, and that is high praise indeed. This is a reader’s eye resting dream.

Secondly, the spelling, grammar, punctuation and overall approach to the written form of the English language, is pretty close to perfect. I won’t say it’s 100% accurate, because I have no degrees in English or Literature to back it up. What I will say, I think this is about as close to perfect as I can imagine. Even the word choices are lovely.

Next, the character growth in such a short story is incredible. The main character walks us through this piece of life with expert precession and gives us so much to feel. I felt all of the emotions come through, including frustration due to some of the comments made about in-laws. I love that every character has a piece where they fit. I love how the story fully archs. It’s wonderful.

However, the huge thing I think this story deserves is high praise for the whole story it is in very few pages. I have often said that it is incredibly difficult to write a complete story. That difficulty increases when it’s short, and anyone who can write a short story that has a full narrative in it is a master of the art. Well, Ashley Barron is a master of the art of the short story form, and my evidence of that is “The Birthday.” Bravo.


Score

With the math in mind, “The Birthday, A Short Story” receives a 98/100 and I’m putting this in the “Mrs. Y Recommends” pile because  I know I am going to read this book many times to come, especially when I need a quick pick me up for my life and my chaos.

See you tomorrow everyone!