Review: Trash, by Thom Simonson

Title: Trash
Author: Thom Simonson
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

“Photographer Amanda Kerwood looked with disbelief at the shambles that used to be her studio. Her computer was missing and with it the images for her up coming gallery show. She’d invested over a year photographing women for a series of nudes. Women whose breasts bore the scars of a vindictive surgeon. Women who put their trust (in) her. Driven by her concern for them, Amanda risks her own safety to seek out the thief.”
-Description from Amazon, with alteration in parenthesis

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I don’t think this will be as long of a review as I normally write, but that’s mainly do to this being a short story instead of a book. For the most part, I don’t have much to say about a short story in order to give it the review it deserves. I’m going to try it out here though since I wanted to bring u pa few things.

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Trash was a good story. From the description you pretty much get the entire story there. That’s not a terrible thing in some cases. For this story, it didn’t kill my enjoyment. I mean, how easy is it to find that balance between telling too much or too little when describing a short story.

While this was an enjoyable read, I feel that it was much too short to bring up my rating. Most of this could be used as a great start for either a longer story or full length novel. Basically, this story starts out with the main character Amanda discovering her studio has been broken in to. Her laptop with her project is gone and the cops come. One detective could care less while his partner shows genuine concern in the case. Later on the reader finds out what causes the difference in the detectives’ attitudes, I also thought that reasoning/outcome was a little weak. I think the limit of this stories length hindered a more believable or at least a much more explained ending.

The characters were very well written. But there was only a mere glance at them that makes me feel put them to waste.

A solution I see to my “dislike” of this story: Write a sequel. This may allow for me, and other readers, to see more of the great writing Simonson obviously has, along with a more developed story. Another solution, and what I’d feel is within the author’s reach, is to lengthen this story. I wouldn’t say no to rereading a similar story from the author. I think adding more in between various parts in this existing story could drastically improve it. While I enjoyed some ways this story seemed stripped down (no excess discussion of the police procedure, not too much time wasted on a few other things), I think beefing up the story in other areas (more involvement of other victims/models, a little more working on the police case, though not overly so) would increase my enjoyment.

I feel that only the surface of what this story really wanted to say was touched. I’m going to keep an eye on this author because I feel he has better stories/novels to share with the world. Don’t let my rating completely fool you, this was enjoyable…but I just can’t bring myself to rate it higher when I was left wanting more.

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