Commentary on "He Loves Me" by Meryl Hall

The story arc was very present and worked in Meryl Hall’s story “He Loves Me.” Amy is struggling with alcohol and an obsession with a boy, which hooked me, then it climaxes with Amy being pregnant. The story starts to resolve as she talks to him in class, but quickly turns on its head again at the end, which is successful.

The dialogue was done well besides the name-calling at the beginning, but otherwise is consistent throughout. I would have liked to have seen less dialogue tags, they pulled me out of the action. When Hall writes, “‘You look like hell,’ commented Sam,” I would have rather seen a simple “said.” Hall does it many more times with “questioned” and “asked” and “greeted” and it puts speed bumps in my reading.

The characters are believable and relatable throughout; I liked how Hall wrote about Sam and her relationship with Amy, it was a successful depiction of a good friend but Hall didn’t go into detail about their history in order to show that to the reader.

I’m tired of the college scene in college writing. The advice to “write what you know” is valid, but I’d like to see people get to know more. You don’t have to be a poor Afghani girl to write about one, and I think the story could be much stronger with a change in scene. If the scene is important to Hall, then it can at least be strengthened with description. Street names, weather, and building names are a good place to start if the author wants the story to be set in a college environment.

The end was done well. Through dialogue and careful description, Hall puts Amy into an excitingly unbelievable situation but succeeds in making it believable. The story is done well and is full of surprises, but I’m sure a revised version with a change of scene would be even more enjoyable.