Blooming Books

The Color of Your Voice - DaniN

Summary

What happens when a death row prisoner and a prostitute fall in love?

          Vy is a girl who can see colour, and she's determined that she's destined to become a great painter. Her confidence dwindles as she's subjected to berates from her classmates and her own mother. Struggling with her self-esteem, she crosses path with Truong, the street thug who will come to become a death row prisoner.

          A short story sets in Vietnam.

Characterization

Truong: The first few paragraphs somehow made Nguyen seemed like a middle-aged to an man—a tired one, at that. How he behaved, and his personality was told. True to how he acted, indeed he was silent and isolated. Multiple times, it was obvious he was ready to die.

           It was interesting as to what crimes he did to be prisoned in the facility. Not only that, but he was on death row. As a thug, he fit the debt collector image well. A merciless debt collector. Somehow, it connects with his initial image of how he was introduced, you did well with that. As the story progresses, it turns out that he really did a lot of crimes as a thug. It was not as spectacular as expected like he did something big and got caught on the act, but it was those grave crimes that accumulated, but it was quite realistic.

           Despite fucking everyone up, he still had some morals in him. Despite Vy's mother selling her to him, he did not jump the gun. Though, it was gross and went over-the-top with his threat, somehow, this grounded his character. He even knew she was escaping, and instead of securing her, he even helped Vy. He also felt a little something to rejoice when he saw that she listened to him. It showed his human side. But of course, knowing the reason behind it would have been nice. It was not disclosed until the very end, but it was said he may just have been to dumb to understand the concept of loving and caring for someone.

           He said he was a good kind of bully, which is again, contradictory or inconsistent to his merciless character who fucked up everyone. He should not have claimed to be a good bully because the exceptions were more applicable to just her.

           Him feeling awkward if he did not try to converse after barging into someone's house is somewhat inconsistent with his character. Might I suggest that he should have been more awkward with the fact that he's more concerned with what he did to her hair rather than keeping quiet. Awkward that he's more conscious of her. He's merciless. He beats up old people and hits children. Why feel awkward just because he can't converse? Even if this time he was not about to collect debts at Vy's home, he still barges in people's homes to collect money and then beat them up. If this was him when he was in prison, it'd be more believable.

           So far as the first few chapters, Vy has been the one getting most of the character development and depth. Somehow, Truong became a variable for her characterization instead of having him grow with her (figuratively since they could not grow with the same background and scenes). He was not given the exposure he could have had. Or even with just his interactions with her didn't contribute much to how he became the thug he was. It was not shown like Vy's so it'll be hard for him to gain sympathy despite being on death row. What salvaged him was his relationship with Vy. It was even more developed than his character. His was more of the reality about him being a thug, and the information was just discussed in a dialogue or placed here and there, every now and then, just like the sound of colors that Vy should be seeing. In chapter 2 (3), he talked about his happiness, that was good since it gave the readers more information about him, but somehow, it just came out of the blue. No internal struggle whether he should share it or not. No indication. Perhaps a bit more conflict or hesitation or what pushed him to decide on telling someone that he's happy enough and he bought someone to hear him would be good. Not just because he's happy enough. Even when he was sharing details about him, it becomes about Vy again, just like when they talked about jobs. Again, his character was overshadowed. Not that it's not good, but I think a bit of balance would be great. Even if Vy is the main protagonist.