2006 Author Reviews for
Dostoevsky\'s Mouse

It\'s difficult to find really good novelists. Novels can get bloated, bog down, and suffer all manner of problems due to baroque plotting, drawn out characterization, repetition, and other such things. Dostoyevsky\'s Mouse tackles the epic task of trying to cover a relationship that at the very least lasted years, if not a decade or more, and though she hasn\'t finished, what we have is very promising and speaks to her skill in characterization but also in terms of developing a relationship and a plot over long periods of time. She\'s a good prose writer--poetic skipping about and minimalism are avoided for the sake of working out the details, though of course, novelists, too, have to compress things and DM does so convincingly. Her skill in exhibiting tension in a relationship, without allowing that to stagnate or go over the top into violent clashes, and to display the intelligence and caution of her characters is very well done. She can write complex characters without simply telling her readers about that complexity--it\'s displayed, it\'s shown, in measured doses and without fuss, so that the reader is simply drawn along. I hope to see her work finished one day and that she\'s written more than this one story.