Well, I liked this better than the last few weeks. An old-fashioned story, but I mean that in a good way, with developed characters and some nice pacing. Could have used more local color, what with it being Africa and all. In the end, it does suffer from what most of these type of stories (I always lump them under Kipling's "Mark Of The Beast" but I'm sure there are earlier examples) suffer from - non-locals violate "primitive" belief and pay consequences far beyond what's warranted (at least in Kipling the main character openly mocked a god and performed an act of sacrilege). So, because this lady happens to live in a universe where you shouldn't move chameleons, her child is born deformed. And was that (finger for a penis, was it?) enough reason to smother the kid? What would parents of Thalidomide children think?
So, while the details of the story didn't work me, I do have to say that the writing itself was pretty darn tight. Nice, deft handling of the dream sequences and non-cringe-inducing writing in the sex sequences. Gill Ainsworth will be someone to watch for.
Transition silence gaps still seemed a little abrupt.
Thanks for listening
“He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that’s for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I’ll be bound – you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?”
Gustave Flaubert, NOVEMBER (1842)