Mary Worth 1,144

The Big Game has started. The Santa Royale Soccer Players vs. the New York Blazes. As we approach the climactic scene of this remarkable story, I just want to take a moment to ponder the marvelous craftmanship employed by our story tellers.

This story has covered a ten-year period, and due to the remarkable talents of our author and artist, it has actually felt like ten years. That's not easy to pull off.

It all began when Mary "dodged a bullet," thus introducing us to Gina's deep emotional scars and her tendancy to over react to verbal cliches. The author then made excellent use of a writing technique called "telling," and deftly avoided making the common mistake made by most writers called "showing."

For example, we were told of Fate's cruel blow as it tore Gina from the arms of her 14-year-old lover (innocent). Fortunately, we never witnessed any reason for their love; we were trusted enough to use our own imaginations. Most writers don't trust their readers, but it is a wonderful compliment that Karen Moy trusts us so much. She allowed us to decide why these two children had such an unusual love for one another, rather than offering any reason in her writing such as a tender kindness or common cause.

Then Gina told us about her father having witnessed a gruesome mob killing. Moy made the dignified decision to avoid actually showing us any action related to the murder, thus sparing us the violence it would no doubt have portrayed.

Gina bore her cross as she sat by her mother's bed and watched her die. Fortunately, we never had to actually see her do anything for her mother, but we can trust Gina that when she bore her cross, it was heartbreaking and inspiring.

Moy also trusted our imaginations to determine what may have happened to Gina's father, the puppet on Fate's Cruel Hand.

Gina promised her dead mother that she would find Bobby Black, and then proceeded to talk about it at work with her customer, Mary Worth. We came to appreciate how challenging this decision must be in these modern days of social networking. Reuniniting with childhood friends is truly more difficult than any of us realized. Without that weeks-long conversation, we might have assumed based on our own experience that finding a lost friend is simply a few mouse clicks away, and not that big a deal. Fortunately, Gina's dialog corrected our misconceptions.

Then she went to a coffee shop, and we actually watched her use her laptop. Normally, one must go Anywhere on Earth to see such high action. It made sense when Bobby turned out to be a professional soccer player because we had seen him ride a skateboard as a child. Subtle, Karen Moy, very subtle.

Moy has never shied away from surprising her readers. We were surprised when Gina seemed to know so much about soccer, and big games. We were surprised when she took decisive steps to reach Bobby using her telephone over and over again. And we were surprised when Moy took shots against one of her own sponsors (Hilton Hotel) by portraying the staff and amenities as completely subpar.

And now today, she has surprised us once again by actually allowing us to watch Gina watch television.

So many writing devices in one story is truly mind altering. There ought to be a law against this type of writing.

No really. There ought to be a law.

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