Talk:The Woman Next Door (novel)/GA1

GA Review
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Nominator: 01:49, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 18:30, 9 May 2024 (UTC)


 * @LEvalyn, @Reading Beans, reminder ping. Is this ready to pass now? -- asilvering (talk) 00:58, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reminder, it totally slipped my mind! I'll look at the remaining criteria now. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 05:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, I've taken another look and I don't think this article is ready to pass yet. To address the breadth of the article, I think some substantial writing is needed (described more below). To avoid letting it linger for a long time again, I'm going to give a hard deadline of one week to complete revisions.  ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:44, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * contacted me to withdraw this GAN, so I am going to fail it now. Reading Beans, do know that you have contributed important improvements to Wikipedia with your work here even if you didn't get the little GA icon as your award this time! ~ L 🌸  (talk) 05:12, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Comments

 * Looking forward to starting in on this review! As I go, I'll fix minor things myself (and of course you can always revert/rewrite those changes, and make comments below with bigger concerns that I'll bounce back to you for edits. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 18:30, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * To comply with MOS:LEAD, the lead should serve as a summary of the article as a whole, but the majority of the article information is not mentioned there. This is often quick to fix, but you should talk a look at each of the article's sections and make sure their key points are summarized in the lead. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and made this change myself. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In terms of prose and breadth, it feels very unbalanced to have a single sentence in the "themes" section. Personally, I'd use the reception section just for the awards, and use all the cited reviews to build out, instead, a more robust "themes" section. The two key themes I'm seeing, based on the quotes from the reviews, are post-Apartheid politics and female friendship. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, I've just completed a spot-check of sources, and did some initial prose edits myself based on what I found. I'd say now that the "themes" section should probably be one paragraph on apartheid and one paragraph on aging and/or grief. I also think there's enough in the sources for a short "style" section, which I got started. Let me know if you want any more advice on how to proceed in repurposing the reviews from "reception" to organize them into these sections. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 22:48, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @LEvalyn, thank you for your wonderful work! I don’t know how it happened but I’ve not been able to write constructive sentences for some days. I asked around, they said it’s “writer’s block” or something similar. Lol. I’ll reread the reviews now and see what I can flesh out. Best, Reading Beans  04:55, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, I really sympathize with the writers' block, but on a reread I still think this breadth issue is a major one. From what I can glean, an appropriately broad article would have at least two full theme paragraphs. One on the book's treatment of race, and one on their treatment of age. These paragraphs need to go beyond just saying that those topics appear in the book, and actually inform the reader of what the book says about these topics. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * One way to sneak up on the writers' block might be to start with a kind of collage process. In a notes document on your computer, you could go back through all the reviews and collect up their quotes according to themes, e.g., every quote about the topic of age or about the writing style of the book. Once you stick all the quotes on the same topic together it will probably look a lot more obvious what you should say about each thing, and you'll know which sources to use for it too. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:49, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The development section is really great! A lot of book articles leave this information out so I wanted to specifically say that I appreciate the work here :) ~ L 🌸  (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The plot reads a bit too much like a blurb rather than a summary, i.e., it leaves out the details of the main conflict and how it is resolved at the end (you may find WP:PLOTSUM helpful) ~ L 🌸  (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅. Is this okay? Best, Reading Beans  14:02, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Better, thanks for filling it in! I'm curious what specifically the accident is, and from the reviews I get the impression there's some kind of recurring plot point about the neighborhood association, so I think it could be expanded a little -- but I think the current version covers the basics ok. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * On reflection, actually, I think to be a good book article, the summary should cover more than the basics. What are the characters doing in the very first chapter? How long until the accident, and what kind of accident is it? What timespan is covered in the book? What do the characters do in the last chapter? Really prioritize spoilers -- providing spoilers is a crucial service for wikipedia readers, since other places online make them very hard to find out. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:41, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Image check is OK -- book cover is fair use. It might be nice to find a photo of a similar Cape Town suburb just for illustrative purposes but the article feels complete without it. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 06:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)