No offense to the author, but I was completely bored to death with the story. The whole story could have been better had it been trimmed down to the last 10 minutes.
Specifically, what was it that you were bored with?
Nothing seemed to happen for a long stretch of the story. The reader is treated long lyrical descriptions of the twisting road, the trees, what people are wearing, and how they're hunched over a map, etc., but it has very little to do with what's actually happening in the story. Once I realized that all that was happening for the last 10 minutes was the characters getting dressed and driving some place dark for a dinner party, it was very very hard to continue to pay attention. Some of the similes and metaphors also seem to stretch poetical license at bit too far for my taste. At one point, we are told that the apples on the ground reminded somone of a baby's head. Those must have been pretty big apples! In what way did they resemble a baby's head, because other than a general roundness, there's very little about an apple that's actually like a baby's head. Was it soft and smooth, like how a baby's skin is? As opposed to hard and crunch like an real apple? Did it have little wispy hairs? Was it gnarled and bumpy resembling the features of a baby? We don't know. It just felt like that simile was thrown in there for atmosphere, when if you really thought about it, it didn't really make a lot of sense (at least to me). At another point we are told that a car's headlights resemble two drops of mercury, when in reality a car's headlights driving down a road looks nothing like mercury (they called it quicksilver for a reason).
In the end, I felt like there wasn't much of a pay-off in terms of an explanation. How was the evil guy related to the treees? What was the girl-shape that the husband saw sprinting outside? What happened to the little girl Julia? What exactly are the trees anyway? Demons? Space aliens? Just carnivorous plants? What's up with the deranged evil wife and evil girl?
I take your point about apples and baby’s heads. Now that you point it out, the comparison is particularly inapt. However, the bit about the mercury you have plain wrong. From the text, it is:
Outside, moonlight silvered the pastures, slipping along the fence wire like mercury.
Perhaps you got a bit confused while listening.
Actually, if anyone is interested in a copy of the story to read, instead of listening to it, I’m happy to send out as many copies as are requested. Just send me a PM and I’ll forward it to you.
Also, thinking on it and reading what others have said, the story is a bit of a grab bag of different elements. The section where they enter the house and walk down the corridor, and Roger’s wife glimpses something fluttering in a cage in a room, is simply there to be unsettling. Similarly, the use of sock puppets to mimic/control reality was designed to be macabre. Whether it works or not is a matter for the listener, but I personally thought they were unsettling and really, who is a writer writing for other than himself (much as I love my audience!).
The Copse was originally a much shorter piece. After some telling feedback, I expanded it. While doing that, I was reading a collection of Ramsay Campbell short fiction (with one story, about the two couples who go out into a ring of stones, where the number of menhirs keep changing) was a particular influence, so the Campbell vibe is a real one. I was also reading a Richard Morgan book (Woken Furies, from memory) and if you’ve read Morgan before, he really ramps up the atmosphere and evocation to 11.
I tend to take a while to finish a story, let alone edit it satisfactorily, so if the story wanders, that matches the lengthy time I was able to devote to it. Also, it wasn’t written from beginning to end. I had the start basically as is, then I had an image in my head of how the ending should be. The main effort was then to coherently link start and finish. All along, after the initial comments, my intent was to be as evocative as I could – the storyline after all isn’t particularly novel, so to give it a bit of ‘oomph’, I worked on creating a rising sense of dread and atmosphere.
I really do appreciate all the comments, good, bad and indifferent. Thanks.
