Counting Back From Nine-Voice

Voice

Counting Back From Nine is told from the perspective of the main character Laren, and is written in the form of free-verse poetry. I found this an interesting way to portray the story. I found that it was beneficial because it allowed me to completely follow the main point of the story which was Laren's emotions. At some points however, I found this writing format extremely distracting. I was forced to re-read some chapters in order to try and understand what was occurring. As well, the quality of the poetry was not very strong. By trying to tell the story in poem, every occurance had to be artistically described. I found the creativity, flow and overall quality of the poetry extremely inconsistent. Some scenes were better suited to this format than others, which had me going from understanding and enjoying the book to being completely confused. This also meant that parts of the plot were compromised in order for Sharrard to write in this format. Although writing in free verse poem benefitted some parts of the book and added another interesting aspect to the story, I found this voice was overall a down fall, in that it was confusing, inconsistent and caused compromise in plot.