"Aveux" by Taylor Hardy

Taylor Hardy's piece, "Aveux," is about a man who has lost his wife and is struggling to remain strong, emotionally, for his daughter, Amelia. After Becca's suicide, he has been a wreck, but he tries to cope - albeit in ways that are not healthy for him or those around him. When the woman he is having an affair with commits suicide with his gun, the conflict of truly dealing with his emotional issues comes to the fore front of his life. In the end, he finally finds some sort of faith in God, which he had lost following his wife's suicide, through the strength of his daughter as they leave their old life to start anew.

The story's point of view works well for the subject matter. First person perspectives like this one make it easy relate to the character and get in the narrator's head. For this type of subject matter, especially (suppression of emotion and using logic to counter "weakness") I think the choice to tell the story with this point of view was a sound one. The pace of this piece was also not too slow. The story begins by pulling the reader in, and then everything flows. When the narrator is arrested, the pace quickens and, likewise, when the trial is over, the pace slows again.

I thought the dialogue between Erica and the narrator was a little stilted. Both are, I assume, at least upper middle class, and, as lawyers, they are sure to have extensive vocabularies; however, I felt the words didn't flow properly for the subject matter. As a reader, I felt that the tone - at least on her part - was supposed to be raw and passionate but I kept being distracted by phrases like "I refuse to leave you in your time of need" and "...will not let themselves attain..." I think bringing the language down, just a bit, would do wonders to heighten the emotional stakes of this conversation.