Oliver: A Short Story

By Richard Norway

What happens to you when you're forced to face your fears? What happens to you when that person forcing you to face your fears is yourself? Jonas has a decision to make. He's 16 years old and must face himself to make the right decision which will affect the rest of his life. But he has help from an unexpected source.
DesDownunder at awesomedude.com has awarded this short story his Appreciation award. Here are his words:
"Oliver...is a stand out for me because it touches on the human condition in a most universal way with profound meaning for life itself.
Warning: Spoiler ahead
Richard, there is no need to apologize for using Dicken's template of A Christmas Carol, you aren't the first and you won't be the last. (I confess to doing it myself in my A Christmas for Carol story.)
The sheer creativity in Oliver displaces any idea that it is merely an adaptation of Dicken's work. It is so much more. Oliver is not just a 'coming out' tale. It is a 'coming together' story; the unification of youth's evolving potential, and the discovery of what it means to let ourselves and each other be who we are. The way that Richard exposes the cultural pressures on Jonas to be other than who he is, is done with superb restraint and subtlety, relegating the drama to creating the atmosphere of a storm that was never as bad as it might have been. The anticipation of the human drama is never less, or more, than it should be, but it manages to suggest the value of confrontation with self-discovery.
I cannot allow Richard's work to go unpunished, so I am awarding him my appreciation award for writing a story that contributes to our understanding of the human condition in life, love and coming out. Well done, Richard!
Awarded to Richard Norway for his outstanding revelation of the mysteries and evolution of sanity in Coming Out in his story, Oliver

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Norway
• Release date: Mar 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301450503

Richard Norway

I love to write, to express what is going on in my mind, but my engineering career didn't afford me the luxury of being creative. So, later in life, I decided to express what I was feeling and started to write, and I have never been so happy to give to my readers the same joy that I have in writing for them.

Book preview

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