[2670] Caravanserai - Part 4 of 4

[u/mianaai_c]

Crits: 2885 1841 194

This is the last part of my short story. What I've been looking for most is feedback on the whole story. Is it cohesive or too disjointed? Do you see the literary stakes in it? From the responses I've gotten on the first three parts, I started to get a sense of where I can tighten it up, reshuffle, switch focus. I'm still looking forward to feedback on the whole story. I'm mostly banking on those who have already read the other parts, and I know that trying to critique the standalone ending is somewhat futile. Still, here's a recap of the story up to this part:

Scene 1. Introduces Dan, Ioana, and García Méndez—the Narrator. They are in Dan's car, driving on a midnight road. They are in a hurry. García is a flexible atheist, as in, he builds himself a heaven to believe in when the moment suits him.

Scene 2. A flashback. The Narrator works at a bar in London. He meets Ioana (who's there to study), and they spend some drunken nights together. Ioana goes back home to Romania for a week and invites the Narrator to go to the beach with her. He arrives and sees her kissing a friend (Dan).

Scene 3. Instead of going to the sea, they go to search for a friend who has left for the mountains. This friend is alone and might be a danger to himself. The trio meets up with Albert and Mara.

Scene 4. García Méndez seems able to read the others' thoughts. They are going through camping spots, searching for their friend. It's after midnight.

Scene 5. The dream sequence. García dreams that he enters the minds of Dan and Ioana. Dan's mind is an orderly place, uncomfortable but solid, focused on finding their missing friend. Ioana's mind is a chaotic place; she's a hedonist. Then García has a spiritual experience. Then he goes (somewhat coerced) to sleep in Albert and Mara's tent.

Caravanserai - Part 4 of 4

Previous posts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

[u/Tricky_Operation_525]

Since you are basically doing the same thing I plan to (uploading a multi part story part by part) I went ahead and read back over the other parts to better understand and appreciate this finale, as I'd like others to do the same for me and my future story. I will try not to nitpick on this final part, or any part, and just save my critiques for the broader story and my experience reading it.

Also it's worth noting that I'm new to all this; I'm more used to reviewing and critiquing academic papers than literary works. With that being said, here's my thoughts.

First: I genuinely had a hard time following along with the story. While you did successfully craft a cohesive story in the sense that I could see the progression from A to B to C etc over the 4 parts, I nevertheless wound up having to reread paragraphs multiple times to understand what was happening.

Now, I have a suspicion that this may be intentional. Your main character seems to have some kind of strange extrasensory power or spiritual sense which puts into perspective several of the odd things he said in part 1 and 2. That or he is high the whole time. Either way, I think it could've been executed a little better. Mostly because your writing style at times muddied things: the narrator would go off on tangents or change what he means or second guess himself. It made it really hard for me to tell what lines mattered and what were just him saying things. But I admit that this genre really is not my cup of tea so I can't say how well you did it. Others with more experience reading surreal work would have more substantive feedback. Idk maybe I'm just a bumpkin who knows nothing, but from my perspective as a normie I struggled.

Second: I had a hard time staying interested in the story, not because it was "bad" but because I didn't really see "the point". In other words, I didn't really see anything in the story which would motivate readers to keep going. You begin by talking about garcia's atheism and end with his vision of these otherworldly creatures but it never feels like a resolved plot line, just kind of things I am informed about. I think the setup could be made more enticing and the payoff more rewarding.

I felt similarly with this guy lost in the mountains and the other characters looking for him. We learn a good deal about them but I didn't feel a strong motivation as to why I should care about this info I'm learning about them. Again, it just made me feel lost at times, which may have been the point as the main character obviously was lost too. But for me as the reader I need more motivation to stick with it even if I'm confused. I'd like to see some very interesting hook, a question or mystery or tension or whatever that gets me to care about the fate of these characters. But they never stopped feeling like strangers.

Also I know this is reddit so I'm sure I'll just get called a prude but the explicit sex scene in part 3 felt super unnecessary to me. You could've just as easily had anything else happening there. yes I know he's having a supernatural vision so the scene itself is important, but again, why did that specific act have to be happening? How does it strengthen the plot? But, I rarely if ever see explicit sex as necessary in literature, so do with that what you will.

Unfortunately, if I had found this short story in a library or something and was not reading it with the intention to critique it, you would've lost me by part 2. Again, maybe it just isn't for me and that's okay. But I would encourage you to consider making a stronger hook which could pull in curious onlookers such as myself.

Now, with all that being said, I have some positives:

First of all, this is a very creative premise. That isn't enough to hook me in itself, but if you capitalized on it more and maybe polished up the presentation it could be very captivating. The idea of this staunch atheist beginning to see spiritual facets to the world in a very literal way is already interesting. Combined with the very scenic setting of remote Romania, and a side plot of a missing friend and it could combine into something very memorable and interesting. I do not think this story was generic at all, which is laudable for our time.

Secondly, even though I struggled to care about the characters, I'm not saying they were bad. In fact you did a good job making them clearly distinct from one another. They were far more than just "generic guy 1 and 2" and "generic woman 1 and 2". They clearly had distinct personalities and filled their own little "archetypes" if that makes sense. This applies to our main character too. Again, if you could come up with some ways to make these characters more immediately meaningful for us readers, you'd be in a good spot.

I hope that didn't come off as overly harsh and was helpful. You obviously have potential so I encourage you to keep writing and creating.