“My major feedback is that the story’s reference to Carver’s ‘Cathedral’ is both a strength and a weakness. It’s a strength in that, like Carver, your sentences pack a punch, your dialogue is crisp and filled with subtext and your characters are suitably difficult to define in terms of good and evil. It’s a weakness is that some of the lines ("bub”, “That’s really something”) are straight lifts, and so, as a reader of Carver, I’m placed in the unenviable position of comparing your work to his, when really, all I want to do is lose myself in your story. At present this feels like a homage, as in, this story signals the next Ray Carver, whereas I want to read a story that makes me think, ‘holy shit, this is the first Jonathan Durbin, and I love it.’“