Hi, Anna !
By your request, I have just finished reading your short story, "Traffic Lights" , and hope to provide you with helpful and encouraging comments as you go forward with further revisions. Please remember that these are the thoughts and opinions of only one reader, so feel free to take whatever insights you may find useful and throw everything else out.
Initial Thoughts/Overall Opinion: I'm not sure I can tell you how much I enjoyed this unusual little love story. My heart ached for Norton. Even with a wife he enjoyed, his actions showed just how lonely he was for connection. I love how you left the ending open, as there's no way to know whether that frail connection could ever lead to a real relationship, but the connection itself is real nonetheless.
Strengths: I think my favorite aspect of this work is Norton's poetic voice. Toward the end of the story, he speaks of how it seemed "unlike him" to feel "brimming with unexpressed passion," but really I think the words you use from his POV tell a different story. In only the second paragraph, Norton describes his relationship with his wife as if they were stars: "Sometimes he imagined that they too were stars, and that his clumsily spun in quite a different orbit to hers, where anything he said to her had to pass through inexhaustible light-years until the words finally reached her, crumbly and practically inaudible." Such language comes directly from a man filled to bursting with an unexpressed passion. I often do not "read aloud" in my head (I read too fast to "hear" it properly), but I forced myself to read this entire work aloud in order to really let the words roll around on my tongue, like a fine desert. It's really quite marvelous.
Plot/Structure: In some ways the structure of your story is almost too archetypal. Man meets woman, proceeds to endeavor on a love affair with her--to the chagrin of his wife--faces some sort of confrontational moment upon discovery, and the affair either ends tragically or culminates in a new life for its participants. What you've done to keep this plot fresh is drastically changed the terms of the characters' interactions. From Jackie's point of view, their story is most likely only beginning at the very end of the work; Norton has already done the messy business of falling in love. They are essentially separated by time.
I particularly love, too, the way Norton's fall is described. Their first encounter mirrors that of "seeing someone across the room" for the first time. He even describes her as "wearing a gown of twisted blue metal and crushed in nature’s unforgiving embrace," and rather than the stereotypical portrayal of his heart racing, he instead feels his blood pressure dropping out of fear. All the elements of the archetypal love story are there, only modified for your own purposes. The affair even seems to culminate with physical descriptions of his crafting, "with his lily-white hands, anecdotes, stories and nicknames." This particular section feels incredibly intimate, as if he is making love to the woman in only his mind.
Characterization: Norton Grey, from the very outset, seems to be a man with an incredible sense of duty. He walks his property, not for the joy of it, but "because he felt that, living on sixteen acres, he really ought to explore it." Then, once Jackie has been taken to the hospital, he feels torn between wanting to visit her and not wanting to visit her. He obviously has discovered the status of her health by the time he arrives, which makes me wonder how much time has passed for him before he chooses to make his first visit. Norton also very much seems to be a man of "unexpressed passion," (as his mental language attests), so it is quite believable that he would essentially fall in love with a woman he quite literally does not know.
Norton's wife seems intentionally drawn as a caricature. She's described as Swedish and as having a "blondish neutrality" that mars all her interactions with her husband. She is as a cold fish to his unexpressed passion, so it is easy for the reader to imagine why Norton would stray (in his heart at the very least). On the other hand, I would like to have seen how their confrontation would have eventually played out. Our only evidence of her displeasure is that she is "producing at least one embroidered handkerchief per week." Then, by the time a woman calls Norton (whom we only assume is Jackie) she has already left and returned to Sweden.
Jackie is most fittingly the least accurately portrayed and most mysterious character in the story. We know literally nothing about her, other than she was adopted and has a sister, two things which seem to stun Norton when he finally encounters the latter. The reader is given only enough to confirm that she is most likely not the person Norton has crafted her to be.
Grammar/Spelling/Punctuation: I only saw two items that you might consider editing.
"an ambulance was despatched" -- I've always noticed this as being spelled "dispatched," but dictionary.com lists your spelling as a more rarely used version. However, I will freely admit this might be a slight difference in usage between American English and British English, so I would not change it solely on my behalf.
"And yet, something in his English blood implored him, and forced his hand. It’s only polite." The second comma in the first sentence is unnecessary and (to me at least) creates a "stutter" in the flow of the sentence. Also, I believe you mean "It was only polite" rather than "It is only polite." The change in verb tense is currently awkward, and I've not found anything online suggesting "it's" is often used as a contraction for "it was," only "it is" or "it has."
Suggestions for Improvement: This story, out of necessity, is very much drawn as a one-sided drama. I would be careful that your characters (Norton's unnamed wife for one) do not remain overly two-dimensional. On the one hand, it's obvious that her separation from his thoughts belies his lack of real interest in her, but at the same time it would be nice if she had at least been given a name.
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5!
Thank you so much for the opportunity to review such a wonderful little short story. If you have found anything at all I've said useful, please do feel free to request reviews of other pieces. I would very much be interested in reading them (should I ever find the time). Thank you again!
Amalie
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