This will actually be two different reviews, since I found two completely separate sets of issues that it raises.

First, an analysis of your story's structure and the narrative style you bring to its telling. I found much that was worthy as I read through this. Yet, I have to conclude that your approach doesn't work. It seems that you are trying to write both a novel and a short story at the same time, while availing yourself none of the advantages of either.

It's clearly not a short story; not with scope both in time and space that it encompasses. While short stories never really come with a predefined definition to make our job easier, I think it's fair to say that they consist of a single situation, issue or problem that needs to be addressed, one that leaves both your characters and your readers with a sense that a single, specific result has been achieved. This single situation is carved out of a larger context, one that can either be portrayed to some degree or other, or simply referenced in passing. But that larger context is not the point of the story.

In this piece, it clearly is. You present Noka's entire life, most of it center stage in the present, while the period that took place prior to the story's beginning is described and plays an important part in the proceedings. You don't have a short story here; you have dozens of short stories, none of which you are taking the time to tell. There is simply far too much information to be shoehorned into a short story's restricted parameters. Yet, by pretending that it is a short story, you fail to do much justice to any of the passages that, instead of the two or three sentences you now give them, could properly be expanded into complete chapters of the novel you have not written.

As a result, you don't really allow anything to maximize its potential as either plot points or dramatic moments. This happens, then that happens, then some more things happen, but none of it forms a progression with steadily mounting tension. It's just a series of journalistic moments, referred to but not really offered to the reader as an experience that they might share and immerse themselves in.

I don't think it's a failing of technique; when you do expand on various moments, your narrative is believable and well presented. I think it's a failure of vision. I'm not sure you are able to see the stories you are passing over with scarcely a glance. Look closer. You don't need to tell us everything. Tell us the one thing that will show your characters in transition, a transition that counts for something. That's what make us remember a story.

Now for my second review. What I've previously written is what I felt for most of the story. Then, as I approached the end, my opinions shifted, as did the story's priorities. By the time I had finished, I no longer believed that yours is a failure of vision. In fact, I fear that the story is a perfect reflection of your vision. I can only ask one question in response: What are you thinking?

Is it possible that you don't realize how deeply offensive a story you havehere, one that renders all discussion of the characters, plot and theme irrelevant and instead shines the light directly upon you and your own priorities? Understand, I'm no prude; nor am I squeamish. I'm fine with the depiction of evil and the portrayal of realistic horror (as opposed to Stephen King cartoon horror). What is disturbing is your bland, uninvolved journalistic approach that I previously referred to, applied to the truly disgusting events that close your story forces one to suspect that such degradation, cruelty and exploitation simply falls under the category of "one more thing," for you.

If that is the case, nothing I say will penetrate and you can safely stop reading right now. But if not, if my stance in any way surprises you, just remember this as you continue your literary explorations: your first obligation is to your reader. You have give them something in return when you ask so much of them in the way of tolerance and acceptance. Quentin Tarantino manages to shield his audiences from the truly disgusting content he portrays by placing a buffer of humor and surrealism between the audience and the actions on screen. He's essentially trafficking in comic books, we know this, and so we needn't get overly involved with elements that, in the real world, would make us puke. We can laugh as blood flows and gore splatters. In contrast, his early "Reservoir Dogs" was likewise brutal and violent, but, as it existed in the real world, not a comic book, the violence was measured, even restrained by his later standards. But, given that we knew it was "real," it was far more effective as a result. "Requiem For A Dream" offered us, as does your story, total despair with no hope of redemption. Yet, throughout, one sensed that the story itself did not identify with the downward spiral of its characters. At the end, we were left with a work of art that managed to stand to the side of its central events, comment on them and thus give the audience a sense that redemption was possible, if not for these characters, perhaps for us.

You give us nothing. Your brutality is offered without comment, without any distance, and in a way that suggests that you either approve, or, worse, you see nothing different in the killing of Noka and the killing of the chickens. I'm not suggesting that such a position wouldn't be valid. Only that you've made no effort to offer the argument within a context of anything resembling art. Instead you give us pornography, a pornography of violence and cruelty, where the surface action is the whole point and the only point.

Frankly, you're better than that.