Alecia McKenzie’s short story Full Stop is a very impressive story about a cold relationship between mother and daughter. The short story consists of different letters which have been written by Grandma Scottie and her grandchild Carmen. The plot of the story is very simple, they write each others and tell about how their life’s going. In the story grandchild Carmen sends regularly letters and also money to her Grandma who uses the money for specific purposes. Carmen considers her Grandma as her biological mother because her own mother left her and her brother with their Grandma. The real mother is described as ”a snake in the grass” in the story so it tells a lot of their relationship.

Grandma’s character is a very religious person, which you can notice on the first Grandma’s letter. She always writes ”God bless” in the end of the letter. Grandma asks money that she doesn’t really need. In my opinion a good christian should live simply life and be satisfied with it. But however she is a good mother to Carmen because she takes care of her.

In the short story is mentioned Normy who is Carmen’s husband. Normy is called for ”hubby” by Grandma. Grandma and Carmen often writes about how Normy’s doing. For example Grandma often says: ”say hello to your hubby”. They also talks about some Richard who is Carmen’s brother. He doesn’t keep in touch with Grandma at all. He seems so busy and reluctant to write to his foster mother, Grandma Scottie. In the end of the story Richard finally writes to her how he’s doing but quite briefly I think.

Carmen has seen her biological mother only at once and her relationship with her seems to be quite complicated. Her mother wants to know her own daughter better but Carmen declines to contact with her. In the story Carmen’s mother tells the reason why she has left her children with Grandma. The reason of the event is a very different version from grandma’s. I believe that Grandma’s version is the right one cause the entire story has written in Grandma’s opinion so that version seems to be more reliable.

The story was quite interesting and easy to understand even if it had no punctuation in Grandma’s letters.