Post-apocalyptic Reading Impressions: Hole by David Lovato

Preparing for the apocalypse is hard, thankless work.

Even when you’re the only one to reap the benefits. Free on smashwords.com, Hole by David Lovato is the account of one man at the end of the world being really bored. … Yeah, that’s about it.

There are pages of details about the survival shelter Guy MainCharacter made and now resides in.

We learn about how his friends and and family thought him insane and didn’t want to play with him. Unfortunately, we don’t really learn these things by seeing them or seeing him experience them, we get them recounted anecdotally.

1. Guy prepared for the end.

2. Guy’s friends and family preferred real life over preparing for the end.

3. Guy is super bored and misses people and life because he’s alone in his hidey Hole.

4. Guy decides to leave his Hole and…

YAWN.

It was written well enough; it just wasn’t interesting or engaging. It would have been nice to have felt his pain rather than just understood that he was in a regrettable, sucky situation.

Feeling empathy for MainCharacter was hard because he himself was more anecdote than person. An anecdote that was summed up in a sentence by economist Joseph A. Schumpeter:

“We always plan too much and always think too little.”

My rating is a middle of the road 2.5 killer robots out of 5

2 thoughts on “Post-apocalyptic Reading Impressions: Hole by David Lovato

  1. Just wanted to thank you for reviewing my short story. Interesting site you have here, I think I’ll have a look around.

    Not really going to “defend” my short story, your review was fair and honestly I agree. I wrote this story when I was 17, it’s clear I had a lot to learn. I still do. Guess the lesson from your review is that objective narration is a bit sterile for something like the end of the world.

    Anyway, I wrote it that way because my focus was on psychology rather than on the actual event. I wanted to write about the end effect, only touching on what led up to it. Guess it didn’t work out so well for everybody.

    Anyway, thanks again for reading and reviewing, and again, your site seems pretty cool.

    Also, in case you were wondering, this story isn’t the only time I’ve touched on the apocalypse, nor will it be the last. Maybe you’ll find some of my other pieces on it more interesting when they (hopefully) get out, in the future.

    1. Hello David! Glad to see you weren’t upset and offended- I know both Tavia and I hate to give reviews we feel are unduly harsh and it worries us when reviewing anything even slightly negatively.

      I’m glad you like the site and what we’re doing here- stick around, I’m sure we’ll always be interested to hear what you have to say.

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