The story is mainly exchange of letters between woman named Carmen and her grandmother Scottie. Carmen lives in New York with her husband Normy, and her grandmother lives on some island. Grandma often asks Carmen to come visit her back home, but Carmen doesn’t have so much holidays that she could go. Carmen sends money to her Grandma almost every time she sends a letter to her but usually Grandma doesn’t use the money for the purpose it was intended to. For example Carmen sends her money to put burglar bars up to her windows but Grandma buys a new mattress instead because God will protect her from evil. The second time Carmen sends the money for burglar bars Grandma buys a dress for her neighbor’s funeral because she didn’t have anything else to wear. In the end of the short story Grandma finally agrees to put up the burglar bars maybe because there had been a robbery on her friend’s house or because she wants to please Carmen.

Grandma wants Carmen to contact with her mother but she refuses to do that because she doesn’t know what to say to her since Carmen has only seen her mother once. In Carmen’s opinion her Grandma is her mother because she raised her and her brother Richard. Their real mother lives in London but she comes to New York for a surgery and sees Carmen and acts like she is her long lost baby. Carmen’s mother tells that when she came to pick up Carmen and Richard their Grandma didn’t let them go but Grandma disclaims that. I think that when their mother came to pick them up Grandma was already so devoted for the kids that she couldn’t let them go. Maybe she as well thought that they were better whit her than with their real mother who was in her opinion “snake in the grass”. Grandma also says that “The Good Lord appointed me guardian—and look how fine you’ve turned out”.  I got the idea that Grandma was really stubborn and she is very religious and thinks that God will save him no matter what. She tells Carmen to pray for God and she often quotes the Bible. Grandma also asks Carmen to come and visit her and she appeals that she doesn’t live much longer on this earth before “He gathers her onto his bosom”.

Grandma asks often from Carmen that why hasn’t Richard sent a letter to her. And when he finally writes to Grandma he tells a lot of excuses why hasn’t he written and Grandma doesn’t believe those excuses. I think that Richard may have been busy and that’s why he hasn’t written to Grandma. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to read about church and God’s blessing etc.

Text was partly quite difficult to read because there were no commas or full stops on Grandma’s letters and that is probably the reason why the title of the short story is “Full stop”.

Why, dear? is a short story in Open road, the last one of the five stories. It tells about a mother who is scared of her own son. The story begins when the mothers son starts to act differently. The son lies all the time and never tell the truth to his mother. He starts to disappear often and has bought a shotgun and a hunting knife. The comes home late and says something creepy. When the mother ask what is he doing the son wont say anything. He even came home with a bloody shirt one night. The mother starts to bug him and ask where is he and with whom all nights, until the son has a breakdown and start to yell and leaves the house. The mother says that she haven`t seen him, not even once sins that. The boys graduated got married and joined the politics. Later he ran for governor and got elected. Now he`s a famous person that any mother would be proud but this mother is still scared and changed her name and moved away.

The whole story is a letter from the mother to a man who apparently is asking questions about her son.                                                                                                                     The story itself was good and the thing how the mother was writing a letter tells that the truth about her son is coming out to public. The man is who the mother is writing to is most likely a police officer or a detective, who is investigating a crime and the glues lead to the mother son. Why a police officer? The case is that the mother has changed her name, moved away and hid her backgrounds, so you need some kind of access to personal information register.

I, myself liked the story and recommend it to other readers.

Alecia McKenzie’s short story ”Full Stop” tells about Carmen and her grandmother’s correspondence. These main characters write letters to each other. At the beginning of the short story Carmen tells that her grandmother writes without commas or full stops, and then there’s one letter from the grandmother. And then comes Carmen’s reply where she writes ”Grandma what do you mean by God Bless And whats this about weak knees You know youre fit as a fiddle”; the same way her grandma writes. But unexpectedly her grandmother baffles her writing. This gives the reader a feeling that the grandmother might not be all sane.

Carmen is in her thirties and lives in New York. She has seen her real mother only once because the mother lives in London. Carmen and her two years younger brother, Richard, are raised by their Grandma Scottie. The grandmother is a quite peculiar character: she starts every letter with ”Dear Carmen”, and she’s total Holy Roller (she often writes about God, and believes that God will protect her from evil, like burglars and she often writes ”God bless”) and like said, writes without punctuation. What comes to the grandmother’s Christianity, she seems a bit hypocritical sometimes. Or she just really is a truly Holy Roller… Either way, Carmen doesn’t seem to like it so much: she usually just overlooks it. Carmen and the grandmother are very close and they have regularly been writing to each other, giving the fact that the grandma has been like a mother to Carmen. Carmen’s biological mother has sometimes written a letter or two to Carmen, but Carmen hasn’t been able to answer her because she feels like she’s writing to a stranger.

Alongside the correspondence Carmen sends her grandmother money every now and then. Usually the money is meant to a specific purpose. E.g. Carmen sent Scottie money so that she could hire a painter that would paint her house. Although the money usually goes to something way more different that it should go. So when Carmen sent money for the painter, Scottie put the money in the bank because she thinks that the island’s, where the grandma lives, painters are thieves. The grandma is very stubborn with some things, maybe because of her age…

It’s been transpired that Grandma Scottie is one of a kind person. Carmen doesn’t seem to care about Scottie’s weird behavior, but obviously her brother Richard is aware of grandmother’s situation. That can be the reason why he hasn’t kept touch with his grandmother. The story won’t tell the reason so we can only speculate.

I read a nowel named Full Stop. It was written by Alecia McKenzie, and it tells about Carmen who is in thirties and her grandmother Scottie. They send letter to each others and for Carmen the reading is quite difficult and annyoing, because her grandmother doesn’t use any punctuation. They disscuss about normal every day things, about work and neighbours, but they also speak a lot about Carmens mother and about her brother.

Carmen was born when her mother was very young, so her grandmother has raised her. Carmens mother moved to England to get a job, and when Carmen was about two years old, she got a baby brother who also moved to her and their grandmother. I’m not sure where does their grandmother live but they talk about an iseland which in not in USA and I think it’s quite near to where Carmens mother lives (she lives still in England), so maybe it’s Ireland. Anyway Carmen lives now in New York and her brother Richard lives in California.

In every letter grandmother Scottie talks about ”Normy”, and when Carmen writes a letter back to Scottie, she sends kisses from Normy to Scottie. In one letter they talk something like Carmen would be pregnant and Normy and she are thinking about ”taking the baby”, so maybe Normy is Carmens boyfriend. Almost every letter includes money from Carmen to her grandmother, sometimes Scottie uses the money to paint her house and sometimes she puts it in to the bank.

God is very important to Carmens grandmother and she talks about it in every letter. Carmen is not so sure if God can save Scottie from falling out of ladders when she paints the house. Scottie also tells about thieves who are stealing her neighbours houses and Carmen wants her grandmother to put burglar bars to her windows. But still Scottie thinks that God will save her.

One of the things they disscuss in their letters is Carmens mother. Carmen feels that Scotties is her real mother because she is the one who raised her and her brother, and she is the one who always take care of them. She has seen her mother only once, but her mother keeps writing letters to Carmen.

The story was little bit hard to read because like I told Scottie didn’t use any punctuation. There is also many things that are hard to understand. And the end came very quickly, it just ended.

”Why, Honey?” –novel has been written by Raymond Carver. It is a quite short novel that tells about a mom who is worry about her son. The son acts weird and the mom thinks that he conceal something.

The mom of the story is worried about her son, because he begins to behave particularly. Among other things, the proof is that she found her son’s bloody shirt and in addition, the son vanishes sometimes and he also seems to be hiding things. Moreover, the neighbor says that he saw two boys kill hers cat and one of the kids was her son. The boy also resigned from the job without telling her mom and the boy bought a shotgun and a hunting knife.

I think that the mom´s evidence are a pretty convincing, because they are occurring so much and so often. Sometimes the son acts also threateningly. The evidences are quite clear.

The final paragraph of the letter that the narrator wrote tells about her. She suggests that she is possibly very distressed and she is missing her son. She says that she has been praying to get answers. She seems to be very dubious what has happened. The narrator wrote this letter to response for a letter that is unknown and it´s writer is the unknown person for the reader.

I think that the narrator is reliable, because she is telling about her son. Even she tells some bad and alarming things about the boy, she still apologize him. It is however possible that the narrator downplays her own role in the incidents that she has written in her letter.

The writer of that novel has written very simply and easily readable text. He doesn´t describe hardly at all. The text is nevertheless progressing smoothly and clearly. The novel awakens interestingness because the writer leaves the end open.

Written by toivonenn