Great Rock and Roll Pauses, was an overall great read, but at my initial goal of the story’s format, it felt a bit overwhelming. Often I found myself lost in where to focus my attention on. After a few pages, I started to get the hang of it and enjoy the story built around it. I approached the story looking for the typical three-act structure, which sometimes felt like there was one in there, but at other times I felt lost. Almost like the beginning of the Game of Thrones series where there is just too much information coming at me to decipher what is happening. Part of this feeling comes from the introduction to each character, without any context it was hard to tell whose point of view we are seeing the world as, was it about Mom(Sasha)/Alison, or Alison/Lincoln, etc. We are clued that this perspective is from Alison, but sometimes I felt like her voice wasn’t there, especially when you imagine the scenes with Lincoln. Looking for the catalyst moment that drives the story forward, there could be many, but the one that stands out to be is the introduction to pauses on page 13, where Alison first gives us a sample of Linc’s obsession over pauses.
As the dynamic of each of the characters comes to life more you begin to realize that the pauses are a reflection of something deeper, almost overlaying on top what the issues each of the family members endure. One theme that I thought about was that to Linc the pauses almost reflect his inability for him and his dad to connect. It’s as if Drew’s busy and stressful career isn’t giving him the needed time to see what Linc needs from him as a father. As if his talking about a song’s pause was a clue for that person to pause and take in what’s happening. And when the climax hits when his father blows up on him about the pauses it was a failure on both Linc and Drew to not pause and see each other.
Overall the pauses likely represent the changes that happen in each of the character’s life that sometimes cause them to come to a complete stop before restarting again to complete the journey. The character with the most change here is the father Drew, his arc ends with a bit of redemption.
The setup of the story is a bit hard to take in but at the same time enjoyable as if you can imagine things happening simultaneously which is a really cool effect in storytelling!