[Matt Q]

Hi John,

I find lots to like here. I'm happy to suspend my disbelief and go with the story, and read this literally. A tiny child. Perhaps like Tom Thumb. And I like how the story takes this seriously. That said, given the title, with it's suggestion that she's alone, and the focus on her imagination, it's possible that the Greggie is only imagined. I also really liked the idea of her imagination not doing what she wanted it to, and the even more, the clarification that "her imagination was not hers alone", as if others were directing or influencing it.

Some thoughts:

but rabbits and squirrels and even smaller birds like cardinals and crows still posed a threat

I'm happy to suspend disbelief here and consider rabbits and squirrels a threat (Greggie might be taken for a nut, and carried off, I guess). However, it's hard to then see carnivorous birds as less of a threat than rabbits and squirrels, as this sentence implies with "even". Surely, they'd pose a greater threat?

I also wonder if there's a way to avoid the over-used "posed a threat" word combination. It just stuck out for me.


Far out over the water three pelicans soared. A double-crested cormorant she would have to keep her eye on perched on a water stump downstream. So many things at the river could be a danger to Greggie without her there to protect him.

Reading up to the word "cormorant" I'm already thinking that these birds are threats given what was said about the threat posed by "smaller birds" bit earlier. And the "So many things ..." sentence reiterates the threat. So, the bit I'm suggesting cutting just seems like overkill.


There was nothing more powerful than being needed, and for now on she would welcome her visitors and try to make them feel at home.

Not sure I really understand the logic of this. I guess it tells us that she hadn't previously welcomed visitors. But why not? Because of Greggie and the risk to him. Are visitors analogous to cormorants and crows: things she needs to keep an eye on, so that having visitors and the risk they pose would make her feel needed as a mother? Or was she ashamed of Greggie, but her feeling of love and power overpowers this? Or is this unrelated to Greggie, and the idea is that being a good host would make her make her feel needed by her visitors?

I wonder if there's scope for something earlier in the story that tells us that she keeps people away from him (or herself) and hints at why.


but before she could speak he touched her ear and said, “Go ahead, mother, pretend I'm not here.”

I guess the close resolves the issue of why he is small, in light of the two options the mother wonders about in the third paragraph. And what he says opposes/undermines her epiphany about being needed. Greggie doesn't seem to want to be the object of her concern. And perhaps in staying small he's protecting her, in the same way that she wants to protect him. But for some reason, I find something about it a little unsatisfactory. Maybe it a just feels a little abrupt?


best,

Matt