Novel Opening, Hotel Vesuvio

[horanel]

Hotel Vesuvio
Working title,
Submitted to Bransford Forum, 1.1.2012
Hello I am a new member,
I have a female and male protagonist, and am attempting (struggling) to switch back and forth POVS. This is a trial opener -- so I am floating for feedback, (I have a number of alts…).

My question is, does the shift work, and which sex should I begin with … Male/Female? First? Many Thanks for taking a look. .. I appreciate any and all comments – your general impressions can be most useful,


CHAP01

April 25, 2013

At JFK, Kristen checked her suitcase at the curbstand. She put on her glasses to navigate the departure signs and saw that her flight to Rome had been delayed. She walked along the fluorescent trek through security, and after she had her shoes on and her laptop repacked, she scanned a bookshop looking for something to read during the wait. She had a digital reader filled with essays on archaeology. Now, unmoored in an airport, she longed for something less serious. There were mysteries and thrillers and titles screaming out to those seeking self-help. She found herself thumbing the paperbacks wondering: What is wrong with me? I am almost thirty years old, I have quit my job, and I have no romantic prospects, my father, my only family, has moved and created another family that I hardly know.
She scanned a bookshelf and found a whole section devoted to books on paranormal activity; most of them seemed to be by people who had glimpsed the afterlife and lived to tell about it. She picked up “I saw Heaven, and it’s Next Door to Hell.” The back jacket testified that the author had been under anesthesia during surgery and envisioned a suburban cul-de-sac with two houses side by side – one home had a front door that opened to a cerulean infinity, beaming with clouds and angels and beckoning rays. Next door, a similar house showed the same infinity, but filled with fire, emanating sulfuric odors and an oozing cesspool. According to the jacket copy, the medical technicians had been amazed that the author’s heart monitor had flat-lined for a full four minutes when he suddenly opened his eyes. She would have to buy the book to find out if the author entered either of the homes.
Kristen put the book back on its shelf, crammed with others in this genre. She had no patience for the supernatural, or fantasies of the afterlife even in fiction. As a scientist who studied the past, she knew there was no quantifiable evidence of a spiritual world. Her job was observing dead cultures, from the standpoint of archeological practice, which was like forensic analysis, the accumulation of data that was measurable. Ghosts were entertaining, a popular mania among those who imagined post-apocalyptic communities, peopled with zombies, ghosts, vampires and the undead.
She browsed, then grabbed two books to satisfy her need for escape: one was an FBI thriller, another was called “The Obvious Cure for the Wrong Kind of Love.” She felt rather foolish as the cashier rang them up, and wondered if he could read something into her choices.
She settled into a seat by the gate and pulled out the FBI thriller first. Every few paragraphs, the lull and drone of the loudspeakers caused her to look up. She watched the planes swoop down on the far end of the tarmac; the window was a flat horizon of arrivals and departures, a borderline between two particular no-wheres.
She checked her cell phone again to see if Daniel had called. She was on the verge of vanishing from New York and he didn’t even know she was leaving. She looked at the other passengers of all nationalities, hunkered down for their long wait, many of them crowded around children and extended family. She pictured the airport route map with its arced lines leading from hub to hub, imagining that everyone else was linked to a loved one, but her own thin links had broken. She sucked in her cheeks so she wouldn’t cry in public. She needn’t have worried, for no one was paying attention.
She took a deep breath. There are heartbreaks here too, she thought -- people enroute to funerals, others seeking far away jobs, people who are broke, or sick, or running away from the law. Her own problems were insignificant, and that calmed her. She cracked open the FBI thriller, where the agent was chasing an international art thief through an airport, and that stilled her thoughts until gate agent made the boarding call.

BREAK
Max O'Connor, April 25, 2013

What a beautiful thing is a sunny day.
The air is serene after a storm.
The air is so fresh that it already feels like a celebration.
What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!"
O sole mio (“My Sun”) Italy’s most famous love song, (longer caption?)


Before his trip, Max O’Conner stopped to visit his father. Butch O’Conner had retired with a pension, some savings and a tiny downsized apartment in Queens. He lived with a dog, Chap, the collie that Max had left with Butch when he had started dating his last girlfriend and spent too many overnights in Manhattan. Surprisingly, Butch had bonded with Chap in a way that he had never been able to do with his family.
Butch was in an armchair, the same one they’d had in the other house, threadbare at the elbows. Chap sat at his feet. There was a dimmed flicker from the TV.
“I’m off on a mission, dad.” His father loved it when he referred to his work as ‘missions’ implying top-secret assignments.
“Better not spill any details.” Butch’s forehead was plastered with frown lines, and the grooves on the edge of his mouth pulled his cheeks down.
“I won’t,” said Max.
“You always had a big mouth. You were a wise-cracking kid. It could get you killed.”
“It’s not exactly that sort of mission. It’s an art recovery case, but I guess you never know how dangerous it might get. Fair warning, I’ll keep an eye out.”
"Don 't know why the FBI would waste time on art." That was a common refrain from his father did not see the value in his line of law enforcement..
“Dad, do you remember Grandma’s maiden name?”
“Can’t say that I do. It sounded like some sort of cheese, like Pecorino. Caprese. Grandma Olivia was Caprese.”
“From Capri? I won’t be far from there. I’ll be in the south Italy, near Naples.” His father waved a hand to the coat closet where there was a shelf of family keepsakes in cardboard boxes with the edges frayed. Max took down a green one that he remembered had sepia toned photos, filled with mementos from his mother’s family. When he was young, he had thought they looked like random peasants from the old country, Italians in hardscrabble landscapes.
Max picked up an image in black and white. There was a girl at a railing, high above a vista of the sea, and far across was the faint ghost of a mountain. She was pretty, in a flowered dress, about seventeen, with dark hair and a cunning smile. ‘Olivia’ was scripted in pencil on the back.
“It’s Grandma! And that must be Vesuvius, across the bay from Capri. Funny thing, Dad, but that mountain is the location of my assignment.”
“There you go, spouting off about your mission. That’s how they get you to blabber. They bring up something sentimental -- your mother or your girlfriend. They take a picture of your girl and put a knife under your foot. They ask you her name, and when you don’t tell them, they begin to cut in the soft spot near of your sole. They could do that with the picture of your grandmother, or your own mother. Or that girlfriend of yours.. .”
Butch was practically yelling and Max was alarmed at his outburst. His usual sour manner never rose beyond a put down or short series of grunts. Max suspected that there was something behind this. “Did that ever happen to you, Dad?”
“Chosǒn….” The name of North Korea, where Butch had served, before Max was born. “Were you a prisoner there?”
“Twenty six days in a bamboo box.”
“In North Korea? Dad, I’m sorry. All these years, and I never knew.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know. You never went to fight. You don’t know what it’s like to wonder where your family is, or if you even have one. You sit in stinking box, and when you come out into the glare of the hot light, you can’t remember if you even have a name.”
“Deprivation.” All this time he’d father had left him with the impression that he’d stormed the the Korean War with the bravado of a strong Irish kid from Queens. “That’s called deprivation blank
“I call it sitting in a stinking box.”
“Did they interrogate you?”
His father’s lips tightened and he growled. “Put that shit away. It’s time I got rid of this garbage of your mother’s. She was always making such a mess. She’s got you making a mess too.” Max was familiar with the switch to bully mode, and even after all these years, he could not stomach him bashing his mother, Angelina. He changed the subject, readying himself to leave.
“Do you mind if I keep this?” Max waved the photo.
“Take what you want. I need to throw that crap out.”
He patted Chap, who didn’t lift his head but murmured in his sleep.
Butch pulled himself out of the chair, and tottered forward in his slippers, then puffed out his chest and attempted a firm military style handshake. Max supposed this manly handshake was meant to indicate a hearty sendoff -- approval as his son left on an important mission. Yet Max could see it for what it was, a wan offering of fatherly love, so rarely expressed that it was difficult for Butch to show it in any other way but (than) this murky pantomime.
“Stay safe, son.”
“Will do, Dad.”

--------------------------------------------

Next he went to see Angelina. She was at a nursing home on Long Island just past the Queens border. It was a nice enough place, as such places go -- the room had linoleum floors, a hospital bed, a bureau with a heart-framed photo and a reclining armchair. Pink uniformed aides floated wheelchairs along the halls, with old men crumpled over, too mindless or frail to use their backbones.
Angelina had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Medicare and Max’s salary helped keep her in a state of perpetual care. The nursing home had once been a Catholic hospital and was as generic as all the other health care facilities around, but still had niches with statues of saints. No one seemed out to torment these forgetful souls, with the plaster saints looking on.
Every time Max walked into her room, Angelina lifted her face toward him with a sunny expression, which made him believe that the sunlight coming through the nylon curtains was coming out of her.
“Marcus!”
“I am Max, Mom.” Marcus was his dead brother, but she came up with a different name each time he walked in. One time she’d said “Rabbi Samuel, how nice of you to visit.” He had no idea who that was.
“I’m going to Italy, mom.”
“Is that so?” That was her most common expression. She said it in response to just about every statement.
“I’d visit your relatives, if I knew where to find them.”
“Is that so?”
“I wish you could come. I am going to be near Naples, and I remember that Grandma Olivia had came from there. You never told me much about them, the ones that stayed behind after Grandpa and Grandma came to the States.”
“Ah the tunnels, and the soldiers!”
“That’s right. Grandma had a story about Naples. Something about her cousins living in tunnels during WWII while the Americans dropped bombs on Naples.”
“Never fall in love with an American soldier,” said Angelina. According to the family folklore, after the American bombs fell on Naples, the citizens were forced underground and took shelter in ancient tunnels and catacombs. Many stayed for months because their homes had been destroyed. After Mussolini fell, they emerged from underground, and young girls ran off their liberators, American soldiers. Grandma Olivia had always distrusted those warriors, who dropped fire from the sky, then stole away their daughters.
“Of course, you fell for Butch O’Conner, the Korean war vet.” For a moment a cloud passed over her face, or maybe it was just a shadow from the weather movements outside the window. He wondered if it was because she might be remembering Marcus, her first son, lost to another American battle. Then Angelina smiled, and started to sing as she had in the kitchen when he was a little boy:

Che bella cosa e' na giornata 'e sole
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa
Che bella cosa e' na giornata 'e sole.

She’d be washing dishes in front of the kitchen window and sing ‘O sole mio,” the popular pizza parlor song, in Italian. She’d wait patiently as he struggled to join in the song with the words she’d taught him. It had been years since Max had heard the song, and he joined her, the two of them bursting into the chorus.

'O sole, 'o sole mio!
sta 'nfronte a te!
sta 'nfronte a te!

The sun, my own sun, It's upon your face! It's upon your face!

Here in her nursing home, he remembered why he worked: to keep her happy, to keep her singing through her frailty and old age. If only he could bring her mind back. Having her smiling now, was enough. He stood up and hugged her.
“I’ll send you postcards.”
“Mia Caro! Buon viaggio!” She knew he was off on a journey; that much she’d understood.

[chocofudges]

Just a few suggestions (lol it may seem like a lot, but I just had the time to write them out.) I liked the excerpt, and hopefully these will make it be even better!!!!

"At JFK, Kristen checked her suit case at the curbstand."
How about just: At a curbstand at JFK, Kristen checked her suitcase

"scanned a bookshop"
I don't really like that expression. You scan books, not a bookshop. Maybe say she entered a bookshop and proceeded to leaf through a few of the books.

"mysteries and thrillers and titles"
you mentioned two genres and then used the word "titles"...use another genre to work with the other two.

I think third person point of view would be best...as in no "i's" or "me"
Ex. She found herself thumbing the paperbacks wondering: What is wrong with me? I am almost thirty years old, I have quit my job, and I have no romantic prospects, my father, my only family, has moved and created another family that I hardly know.

How about instead

She found herself thumbing the paperbacks wondering what was wrong with herself. She was almost thirty years old, she had quit my job, and she had no romantic prospects. Her father, her only family, had moved away and created another family that she hardly knew.

Also, in fiction, I don't think most people use semi colons. I LOVE THEM but I never use them in writing if the audience is YA or children...for those two groups (and probably others), just use a period.

"had flat-lined for a full four minutes when he suddenly opened his eyes."
I would change that to "...four minutes before he suddenly opened his eyes"

There are a few other things (which you'll probably see and fix yourself on a second read), but since your main question was about POV, I'll address that now. I think that it's fine since you're using a scene break. If you were to suddenly switch POV's in the middle of one scene, that would be a problem, but since you are doing it in a different one that will be separated by an obvious break marker (whether it be a double spaced line or horizontal line or whatever), it works. It's not confusing.

Keep up the writing!!!