Customer Reviews

You Will Behave: a novella with added goodies

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Matt Getty's novella is written in the second person future tense, a structural decision that would end in a trainwreck for most writers. However, he remains faithful to his character's desires rather than his own and manages to pull of a cuttingly funny yet insightful story about how what we know about ourselves affects who we are. The "added goodies" are also in the second person and very funny: one is an advice guide for action figures. The whole book can be read in a few hours - the pieces in it definitely toe the line between novella and short story.

The short story version of "You Will Behave," which preceded this novella, published in Rainbow Curve, Fall 2004, is to this day one of my favorite stories of all time. It is a challenge to write in the second person, but to have a mother "lecture" her son about all these sexually soaked topics, well, that's a true feat of literary creation. This reader's interest, indeed fascination, with the main character's life is artfully held throughout the story, which by the way, spans an entire ilfetime. That's almost impossible to achieve effectively in a short story but Getty does it.