In response to George Saunders

The main thing that bothers me about George Saunders’s story is the way the story is structured. I was expecting to read a short story with a wonderful development of dialogue and over all paragraph structure. Instead I had to weed through a bunch of “like” and “she said he said” given to me from the view point of the author. After about ten pages into the story, and about triple that many uses of the word “like” (ect), I had to put the story down. My brain just could not continue.
For the most part, I did think the plot as well developed and I feel the best part of the entire story is at the beginning when Baby Amber dies. Yet the story still continued to read like a reflection conversation – imagine me retelling you a story and having to hear me constantly say, “And then she said…. And then he said…” and so forth. That was the most distracting part of the story. I wanted to give the story a chance and kept telling myself that this form of writing only happened at the beginning of the story. Yet I still kept finding it in the middle and toward the end of the story.
Another thing that drove me CRAZY in the story were the random sequences of numbers like LI 11121 inserted in the story. What the hell what that about? I kept trying to connect it to something, anything, but I’m not sure what to connect it to.
I think the story would have left a greater impression on me had I not been weeding through all these little things.
(And yes, I still want an explanation to the sequences of numbers.)