Bright's Passage
Written and Narrated By: Josh Ritter
Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
THIS is what happens when ya choose based on the cover art… Just NO!
Hmm, thought I to m’self as this audiobook opened: Our author and narrator specifically gives a shoutout, as in: Music By…
Aw, crap. Cuz that can only mean there’s gonna be interstitial music and, to me? That means an author/publisher is overcompensating, trying to add Drama and Flavor and Freshness where, really, the writing, the characters, the plot, the whole freaking STORY should manage it all on their own. Ahhhh, but little did I realize: Nope, and Oh dude! Ritter is going whole hog on the music! Interstitial m’ patoot! TRY HUUUUGE LOOOONG JANGLING INTERLUDES THAT ADD ONLY AN UNEASY MEMORY OF Deliverance.
And it only gets worse from there.
Where to start? Oh, let’s go back to the ending of the book when Mr. Ritter, whom I canNOT refer to as the “Author” or “Writer”—this is NOT writing so much as throwing limp spaghetti at walls—tells us of the vaaaast research he did which was all of a few books (All of which I read, and one of which was very good but which should NOT have been used as a resource, being a collection of anecdotes and conjecture). Okay, those few books are indeed thought-provoking, and I could see how, in an enthusiastic mind enlivened by graphic imagery, they could inspire an idea to form: The Horrors of WWI, the mechanization of mass slaughter, the wounds of war as the Forever-Altered came home and tried to make sense of it all as they also attempted to take their lives back up again… well, yes, I could see how that might make a person wanna write a story encompassing it all.
And hey! There’s that cover art!!! A WWI Doughboy, head bowed, a horse with angel wings in the background, protecting, p’raps, but there, by the Doughboy’s side. That’s GOTTA be great!!! So man I soooo bought it, and I soooo looked forward to listening to it, and I soooo could not beLIEve that 5-hours and 19-minutes, with its CONstant musical posturing, with its inability to weave together altering timelines, with its (Failed) attempt at a depiction of war’s brutality, with its inCREDibly flat characters (And don’t even get me started on how women are either wet noodles, or, well, weak wet noodles), with its horribly horribly INANE willy nilly attempts at creative metaphorical language… oh jeez, I need to take a breath cuz I’m gonna pass out here, and surely there’s some form of punctuation that can get me outta this?!
Why, yes. There IS! And it’s called a “period”. OH THANK MERCIFUL GOD…!
The Publisher’s Summary gives ya all ya need to know about what was Supposed to be the Story Intent, how it was Supposed to Go. So all I’ve got for ya is, incredibly poor writing, monotonous narration, music that is tonally indifferent to how the writing was going, and the occasional egREGiously unfortunate use of the wrong terminology. Leaving the trenches to be slaughtered was NOT called Going Over the Sandbags, it was called Going Over the Top (So there’s THAT book Mr. Ritter did NOT use for his exTENSive research, dude! Arthur Guy Empey!!! Dude, forget the Encyclopedia Brittanica, there’s WIKIPEDIA now!!!).
And dude! I recommended this (Upon seeing the cover art, again, I shake my fist at the sky and howl: Dang you, cover aaaaaart!) to m’ SISTER! You think I’m kinda rough? I was disappointed; she hated it. I’m going Boo! Lite here.
Ah jeez, I’ve wasted a lot of m’ precious life here; I wasted m’ credit; I wasted m’ time; I've encouraged callouses on m’ poor fingertips by clacking furiously on m’ keyboard… What’ll save me?
Why, yes. It’s called a “period”.
OH THANK MERCIFUL GOD!
“.”
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