Amor Divino

The author does a good job providing background without introducing a whole new train of thought. For example, she says that John "prefers not to be called [at his office] for disagreeable things" (p. 15). This one small detail tells us everything about John, and how his cold business mentality affects his marriage. The author doesn't need to waste paragraphs explaining him; everything is in that one sentence. There's another small detail about John, that when he swears, "His British accent makes the expletive all the more shocking, as if he had to stoop much more than an American to use such language" (p. 16). This paints him as an Englishman, with the stereotype of nobility and formality attached, what the mother calls a man "with titles" (p. 19). Again, there is no need to provide an extensive background. The author weaves it into the story with a sentence here and there. There are other examples of this, for example, mentioning that Yolanda was a tomboy as a child (p. 18), or that in New York the grandmother could "drink and gamble...to her heart's content" (p. 21). This mention of her vices puts everything else that we learn about her marriage into perspective.

It's called a short story for a reason. The author needs to give life to her characters without writing biographies for each of them. These kinds of single, descriptive sentences are an effective way to flesh out a character who may not be central to the story, but who is important to its background. This story is about Yolanda, but the other characters are sufficiently introduced so that the story doesn't assume too much.

Would the story have been better if it were written in the first-person instead of the third-person?