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Reviews For Marietta

Name: Oregonian (Signed) · Date: 09/05/13 19:23 · For: Chapter 1
Hi, wildiris. This is Vicki, saying Congratulations on your first story published on MNFF. It is a nice, surprisingly gentle and reflective piece, even though it is written about a crisis situation. And it follows canon well; your story is exactly how it could have occurred. Although you say you're taking creative license, that is what we all do when we fill in these missing moments without violating anything JKR wrote.

You have written a very good description of Marietta's mental confusion about Cho's un-understandable accusations and the gradually dawning realization of both girls concerning what must have happened.

You have brought out well the ambiguities in Marietta's position in the months while the DA was holding its training meetings. Her loyalty to the Ministry shows in sentences such as "Marietta didn't think her mother would ever yell at anyone so close to the Minister," "Dumbledore had knocked the Minister out! Her mother had been right about him!", "On any other day, she would have thought about knocking on that door and asking Umbridge's advice," and "Potter and his friends are such a bunch of blithering idiots."

Your story concentrates on the magical aftermath of the crisis situation (Marietta's face being disfigured by Hermione's jinx, her memory being modified by Kingsley's actions); I would love to read another story written by you as a prequel to this one, where you focus on Marietta's conscious, non-magical decision to tell Umbridge about the DA and the agonizing thought processes that led up to that moment.

You have developed Marietta's character nicely (it was pretty undeveloped in the book) and have expanded her relationship with Cho far beyond "Cho's giggling friend". I was glad that you depicted them as still being friends in the end, able to talk about what happened. It was good that even in the hospital wing they did not get too angry to continue a constructive conversation, seeking understanding rather than mutual destruction.

Your story exhibits good writing that flows well, with graceful sentences and details that contribute a lot. If I wanted to make this review even longer, I could cite many different sentences that work extremely well.

The vignettes at the end were well chosen. Marietta's brief encounter with Umbridge in the hall, illustrating that their relationship was irremediably damaged now, is not, I think, mentioned in the book, but it certainly could have happened and could have inclined her toward beginning to doubt her previously unquestioning support of the Ministry. Her moments on the train going home, as she reflects on the year just completed and how complicated and imperfect their lives were, grow nicely from the few words in the book recording this encounter. I loved the observation that she couldn't understand why Harry and Draco loathed each other and that perhaps it was because they were actually similar.

Thank you for not giving this story a Happy Ending, with everything wrapped up all neat and tidy. As is often true in real life, there was no real resolution; she just had to learn to live with the scarves, the makeup, and the scars, as the days and weeks went by and nothing was changed or ameliorated. No one lives Happily Ever After, and therefore we can all identify with it.

So let me say again Congratulations on your budding career as a fanfiction writer. It was a pleasure to read your story, and I hope that we will be reading a lot more of your work in the future.


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