You Remember the Pin Mill

Wow! This story is a seminar on fiction writing! Bradley makes it look so easy to use not one but two difficult storytelling devices: first person voice disguised as second person and using the POV of a child too young to understand what he's nonetheless revealing to us. I also love all the White Rain and Jergens references that only readers of a certain age will understand. This story will stay with me for a long time.

What a brilliant, powerful, and satisfying story. The language is what makes it so satisfying: fresh, original, and flavorful. The brilliance is the overall effect; its power is in the subtle delineation of the plot and the dramatic understated surprises.

Not to mention choice of details and beauty of description. Thank you for an enthralling and memorable experience!

Terrific.

I concur with Pepper, Nina, and Perry. This is one of the most beautiful short stories I've read in a long time. It is beautifully constructed. I cannot conjure the words to describe how much I love this story!

The details in this story are beautiful and so profound that you feel every dip in the road, every thunder of falling logs. You are pulled into the lives of each character, even those who appear in cameo. The end, when it came, without details, still managed to make me cry. This is one of the best short stories I've read in many years.

What a wonderful evocation! I do remember the pin mill. When I was young, in the autumn, after leaves had fallen, I helped cut trees for pin wood on our farm. Yellow locust was best. I imagined those trees would become pins for telephone lines in exotic places around the world . . .

Thanks, David.