Gone, Chapter 3

We begin this chapter with a little lines and lines of vernacular dialogue whose only purpose is:  Hey, look, Dan is listening to the radio station that he works at.

This is followed by useless exposition and backstory about the DJ (Lacy), extremely boring crap about how the categories of songs are mixed up through the day, incorrect tense, poor grammar, and more of Dan's shitty driving.

I think Dan lied about being a great driver.

More amusing the vernacular is gone the moment Dan walks into work and starts talking to Lacy.  Magic.  She keeps calling him "Big Guy" complete with capital letters.

"Dan pushed through the news room door and grabbed yesterday's local news folder."

Don't you use the same fucking word twice in one sentence, Lint.  Show, don't tell.  And get an editor for your fucking grammar, you twat.  

Lacy is upset and crying about some car accident.  Dan asks her if she's having a, quote, "guilt thing" about it.

I don't know if Lint is trying to make him a sympathetic character here; he really tried to push that with "family man" and "attentive husband" but with all of his "I'm a great driver" and the Amish people with this too, he's just a total douche.

For two paragraphs, Lacy describes what it was like to be on the phone with a stranger when he called the radio show and crashed the truck.  She obviously needs therapy.  Does anyone recommend it?  Do I really need to answer that?  Psychology and medication for mental illness are sins.  You know it's all the devil.

"The hassle of getting out of the driveway, the tangle with the Amish sleigh, getting in 30 minutes later than he usually did, plus Lacey's state of mind over the accident, to say nothing of the hard knot of excitement at the pit of his stomach at the idea of being, as Lacey put it, the "big guy" now."

What?  That's it?  All you've got there is a list, a stream of consciousness, a recap of everything that's happened in this chapter so far and the chapter previous to it, for no fucking reason because it's an incomplete sentence?  Did you even reread your own goddamn book, you senile goat?

That's rude.  I apologize.  Goats are adorable.

A-fucking-dorable.

This caused me physical pain:

"Lacey said, 'Your Penn State farming friends are ready to tell the world how a black cow can chew green grass and give white milk which churns yellow butter. Anything else before I take off.'"

I don't know whether the subject matter or the grammar is worse.  I guess Lint would say the answer is "Jesus".  Christian college has got to be the easiest thing ever:  Every answer is "Jesus".  Here's your PhD in bull shit.

She leaves by kissing him on the forehead, which Lint describes as "daughterly" and as someone with coworkers, I would describe as totally inappropriate.

Dan is relieved to see her go and seems to think she is "over the worst of her depression".  Uh, no--doesn't look like it from my end and I'm the outsider only peeking in for a few lines of dialogue, dude.

He starts DJ-ing and that's just how it ends.

Speaking as someone who has read a book before, I think this entire chapter was wasteful, its only purpose to set up the next chapter, which will likely be when the rapture actually happens.  I called it here, folks.

There are 26 chapters.

Gone, Chapter 2

So this chapter immediately starts off one leg up above the first because it kindly informs us that it is the Liverpool in Pennsylvania.  Same difference.

The very first sentence, however, Lint has made up a word:  Rumblescraped, used to describe a snowplow clearing the streets.

Dan watches the snowplow for a bit then decided to get his car started, which is described as being packed under an eight-inch "blanket of ermine".

An entire car coated in these?  Think I could deal.

He for some reason kicks his car's right rear tire, something he considers to be "affectionate" and a "wake-up kick".  He brushes away all the ermines snow, which we for some reason need a description of to reveal his "Bug with good rubber all around".  I pitched this phrase into the void of Google and the top result was for table tennis, so I have a feeling Lint doesn't know what he's talking about either, which makes me feel we have a sense of solidarity.

We have about a paragraph of useless prose about how quirky his car is before he finally pulls out of the damned driveway goes back into the fucking house to say goodbye to his sleeping children, which is when we learn this is a flashback.

I hate flashbacks, especially flashbacks to "oh, this happened days ago"--why the fuck don't you just lead with the flashback!?

Then there is a flashback within the fucking flashback of Karen and their twins in the hospital bed.  The narrative refers to her here as a "new mother" while only two sentences later refers to them having one older child who I guess doesn't matter.

They make some noises about how wonderful it is to have twins at their ripe old age of however many years like it's a huge deal.  According to a brief search, women are actually more likely to have multiples after 35, so, hate to spoil your miracle who the fuck am I kidding?

Dan bends over the twins and sniffs them to inhale the scent of the "innocent fragrance of clean, warm bodies" which isn't rapey at all.

Like a good little Christian mother, Karen abandoned her career to raise the children, because we all know that's what women are for.

The narrative against refers to the children, repeatedly, as "miracles".  The issue is that Lint is trying to write two atheist, or at least two non-religious characters, which he does poorly because he can't get past his own religious viewpoints.  He tries to roll over this by making his characters sound "elitist" (read, smarter) but little things like this really give him away.  Also, reading an idiot's view of what smart people sound like is hilarious.

He goes to say goodbye to his wife, who sleeps under an electric blanket with a flannel nightgown.

By magic, the blanket is ripped from her past "the hem of her nightdress", so her ankle, maybe?  How risque.

Lint awkwardly tries to write a scene including some sexual tension.  The little Jezebel flirts and tries to tempt her husband with her sinful body.  As a proper Christian in a Christian novel, we can't have such worldly things.

They make some kind of poorly-conceived inside joke about how she gave up her career as an elementary school principal to raise the children while he continued his work at a... radio show.

Good ol' Republican philosophy thrown in:  "Bossing can be harder than working."  Yeah, I'm sure sitting behind a desk is just as difficult as shelling oysters for twelve hours a day.  Yes, I'm being hyperbolic; I'm just tired of seeing this ridiculous idea get touted.  Workers aren't lazy--you're just a shitty manager who can't motivate people properly.

Dan apparently teleports down to his car and climbs in and finally he starts driving to work.  The snow is still coming down but it's slower now.

There are a couple paragraphs of descriptions of Dan driving in the snow peppered with absolutely coated with ermines of smugness about how great his snow driving skills are.

Apparently, Lint forgot his own narrative at the beginning of the story, now describing the road as being a "pristine white" when the snowplow came by minutes ago.

After the smug narrative, we have two whole fucking paragraphs of thoughts.  No actions, just two paragraphs of him thinking about their oldest son, again being a privileged piece of discarded foreskin about how these damned Millennials are so lazy they can't get a job.  Fuck you, right?

As Dan deserves, he slams on his brakes to avoid hitting a slow-moving, 35-MPH vehicle.  The Bug flips around in a 180, which is described in a way that, if it were food, would be plain white bread.

The vehicle in question is described, crazily, while the car is spinning around:  It is a black Amish buggy pulled by a black horse with sleigh bells while two people dressed all in black sit in it.  No idea how Dan heard the sleigh bells from inside his car.  

35 is kind of fast for a buggy, isn't it?

Dan slides hopelessly into a ditch--so much for how good you are at driving in snow, huh, fuckhead?

Even after he is in the ditch, he continues to insist in his own narrative how great a driver he is and that it is all the Amish people's fault that he couldn't apparently just drive around them.

Dan gets out of the car and starts screaming at the Amish couple, who mostly ignore him, but the man spits tobacco at him.  This enrages Dan and he charges after them, screaming, but because this is a Christian book, he can't use any "vulgar language" that might be offensive to the Lawd's ears.

The horse responds by shitting.

They deserve each other.

Dan takes off his hat and stomps on it like an old-timey cartoon.  Delightful.

He watches the buggy "jingleclop" (another made-up word, courtesy Lint) away then goes back to his car.

A guy in a Jeep drives by and stops to tow him out.  Dan checks him out a little and makes eyes at his Jeep.  Lint, Jeeps are not the "classy" cars you seem to think of them as.  Lint expands upon the idea of "class" and "Jeep" by explaining that the car is about 40k.  Lol--look at the guy who doesn't understand how car payments or leases work.  Then again, Lint looks like he grew up in an era where 40k is worth about $125k now, or thereabout, so that's probably where his brain is stuck at, though I am suspicious it has more to do with "rich people deserve it, see how nice this fictional person is".

The fictional person in question is none other than Mr. Masterson.  The plot becomes slightly less watery, I suppose?

The two part ways and Dan continues his journey to work.

This is going to take me longer than the other books.  Fuck, this was hard to read.

Gone--A Novel about the Rapture by Edwin Lint. Chapter 1

Actual cover image. Need I say more?

A married couple sit down to a dinner of hamburgers and coffee at 6pm in Liverpool some time after what the Christians call "the Rapture".  Everything about that sounds awful.  First, why are you drinking coffee at 6pm?  Second, burgers--really?

"Their arms circled each other for several minutes, the tears of both mingling on Dan's chest."

Several minutes?  That's a long time, dude.  Just stand in your kitchen without your phone for three minutes.  Also, how are Dan's tears getting to his own chest?

Lint does not like commas and enjoys random capitalization.  He also doesn't know the difference between "calloused" and "callous".  Lint:

"Your calloused hand diddles your chicken until it vomits into a sock and shrivels back from your callous abuse."

All this before the second page.

He tries to make the characters sound smart.  For example, Karen says "from the standpoint of logic" somewhere in a sentence.  I'm guessing that Lint once heard someone smarter than he is use a similar phrase and he thought it would make his characters sound smarter.  It doesn't, Lint.

The couple kiss.  Karen's lips are described as salty.

"But I still say that something has happened which has no precedent, not even in the minds of science fiction writers."

Lint, you severely underestimate science fiction writers.

The characters comment that maybe "the President" will have more information.  I thought... they were in Liverpool?  If you meant Liverpool, NY, you need to fucking state that because most people are going to assume tea and crumpets, not semi-automatic weapons and obesity.

Suddenly, a cloaked figure appears in the doorway like a barefooted, snow-bitten ninja.

I looked for a snow-bitten ninja and found this.  This is better.

This figure seems to be one of their neighbors, named Veronica.  Despite that she has just randomly appeared in their kitchen barefoot in a grim reaper cloak and shivering, they are surprisingly calm about it.

Somewhere in the house a cat yowls makes a "blood-chilling ma-rawling" sound whatever that is.   Dan, the husband, goes to investigate and shoos the giant black cat out of the house.  He seems to think the cat can understand him, because he talks to it and points at the door.  The cat, being a cat, goes up the stairs.

The next time Veronica is mentioned, it is by nickname and at first, I had no idea that "Ronnie" was the same person as "Veronica".  Worse, Lint goes back to referring to her as "Mrs. Masterson".  At least be consistent!  What the hell, man?

So in dialogue, Dan says that they opened the door for Grim Reaper Ron (no mention of this but whatever) and that he thinks the cat got in that way.

Another example of Lint trying to be smart:

"The human intellect solves audio problems on the basis of association. Even the simple process of identifying a sound requires the retrieval of a previously-heard sound of known origin and the comparison of the former sound with the current one."

This is absolutely shit writing and completely useless to the narrative.  House of Leaves, you are not.

The sound this is referring to is some unearthly wailing noise.

The prose is littered with a few more useless facts that add nothing to the overall story, various info dumps, and finally Dan moves.  Karen sits down like a trained dog and bites her lip so hard she draws blood--that 50 Shades guy would have a heyday.

Dan gets his gun and heads toward the sound.  Liverpool, NY confirmed.

The prose right here is just bad.  The author uses passive voice consistently, orders sentences so that:  She does x and x because x rather than list things as they happen.  It's just bad, guys.

The cat crouches as if to pounce on Dan.

So Dan... shoots the cat.

"The cat's original trajectory was plotted to put his yellowed fangs and curved claws in deadly contact with Dan's throat. The two well-placed shots, however, marred the flight and the lifeless, bloody body thudded into Dan at the belt line."

That's what I mean by badly written prose by the way.  God, this is an action scene and it's indescribably dull.

Furthermore, it's a goddamn motherfucking cat, dude.

So, I think the implication is that the cat is demon-possessed and was the one making the weird noises?

Anyway, Dan sags into a chair after murdering a cat his arduous battle with a kitty-cat ferocious wild animal.  Life is so hard.