Six Weeks by syrrah
Review by Ruibin Rua
Rating: M
Characters: Edward & Bella
Summary: I wonder how a story with no summary would go. Is anyone game to read it? Let's see...
With this review, I realise that I am thwarting Syrrah’s challenge to read a story without a summary, but I really want more people to show their appreciation for this piece of writing, so I hope she will forgive me!
Six Weeks follows a teenage Bella who has graduated from high school and is spending the summer house-sitting with her mother, Renee, in a quiet seaside town. More important than the house, however, is the big, loveable canine, Hal, that Bella and her mom are also called upon to look after. Hal is a very real and important character in this story, as so many events and connections between the characters revolve around his presence.
Syrrah’s Renee has some of the canon characteristics of flightiness and ever-youthfulness, but her character is fleshed out well. Bella herself muses about Renee’s mothering skills, or lack thereof, as she was growing up.
She doesn't live on much herself, and nutritionally, as well as in other categories, failed the Good Mothers diploma. She failed the Good Enough Mothers diploma in most areas, really. Flying colours and a chorus of trumpets attended her award ceremony for the Barely There Mothers Award, but following form, she failed to attend it herself.
It’s these razor sharp observations that make the character of Bella so likeable and Syrrah’s writing so good. Bella doesn’t ask us to pity her, and Renee in this story isn’t actually a bad person either. In fact, she and Bella bond during their summer break and there are times when she was advising Bella that I found myself wishing I had had someone like her to guide me through the anxious teenage years. Bella is both a typical and atypical teenage girl. She doesn’t talk too much, obsess about her appearance or moon about Edward to the detriment of all else, but her heart is still open and she possesses an innocent wisdom that is lovely to read.
There is a dream-like quality to Syrrah’s writing in this story; sentences are typically sparse and sometimes even a bit vague or disjointed. You have to embrace the idea of feeling the words in order to truly enjoy a story like this. You won’t get long-winded descriptions or paragraphs - interestingly, Edward and Jasper are almost always described as Brown and Blond - and Syrrah allows the reader to fill in the detail of a landscape that she has painted with vivid colours and beautiful sweeping brushstrokes.
What day is it? I don't know. Doesn't matter. They're all sunny, blue skies, blue water. Someone banished clouds. I wake with the diamond light, the seabreeze shifting of the net curtains.
This is a story about people and the connections they forge with one another, but don’t worry, this is also a Bella/Edward love story, albeit a far from conventional one! I love watching them interact, often in beautifully subtle, understated scenes, but there are also enough achingly lovely descriptions to set your heart racing.
Through the nights I have been imagining him, feeling delicious in my bones and nerves and skin, flushed softly pink as the unself-conscious me put fingertips to his cheeks, heart not so aflutter but steady and strong. Shared, exchanged breath, lip to lip, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hip to hip. I've had knowledge of desire and I know what it can do; liquid fire, melting limbs, fall into you. Brown, us, soon.
Curl up in a comfortable chair, or on your bed, with a mug of tea or a glass of wine, and let yourself bathe in this wonderful story. You won’t regret the experience.
Banner by JaimeArkin
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