Lost and Disjointed
A review of Christian M. Franklin’s “Lies & Discord”
By Cee Elle Reid, author/editor

It was clear from the start the author, Christian M. Franklin, has a like for poetry. It is shown in the way she wrote some descriptions that reflected what the characters were feeling, therefore, making them visual to the reader. Yet this only happened sometimes. Other times, the descriptions were a list of items with no real connection to the narrative and this appeared throughout the novella more times than not. For example, there were two high schools, three middle schools, an elementary school and one school sat by its lonesome; there was no point in listing these schools. When there wasn’t a list of items being shared, there was a list of actions being told which never supported the actual story; it was more like the actions being told were reported sequences of events.

“Lies and Discord” is being told in the first-person point of view of a twelve-year-old girl, Bonnie. Although it is clear Franklin wanted the reader to know Bonnie was wise beyond her years the struggle to use the author’s voice instead of the character’s voice is evident in the dialogue or narrative; they didn’t flow naturally. For some reason, the author kept having Bonnie say, “the little one” “the little brother” or “our little one” when speaking of Bonnie’s brother either in dialogue or narrative.

It felt as if Franklin was trying to force the character to appear mature with her word choices but it wasn’t coming across as Bonnie’s natural dialogue. Or it could be the reverse, Franklin was trying to force herself to write the mind of a child character and it didn’t work.

It is unclear what period of time this is set in but the racial tension and the language used to describe race didn’t feel as if the setting was current day. The language also didn’t seem to be a common conversation for a child; it leaned more toward an elder retelling an event from the civil rights era or being told by someone not familiar with providing detail from a black perspective. The attempt to be “woke or reflect black pride” was draining to read. For example, each time Bonnie spoke of her town, her “negro town”, she went on and on about how good it was to live there because of what “the blacks” do. There was no relevance to the setting in the way the town was introduced or described to the readers. There could have been a more effective way to describe a flourishing black community than to call it a “perfect little negro town” and to contrast by saying the south didn’t have “little negro towns.” In addition to the awkwardness of this narration supposedly being the language of a twelve-year-old, the major these sorts of descriptions, again, had no relevance to the story.

Each time the author expressed Bonnie’s appreciation, of being black throughout the story, she wanders into a narrative far away from what the character is doing. This, in turn, becomes a distraction to the plot and theme, which is unidentifiable for most of the story.
It almost seems if Franklin was trying to express her adult feelings and views instead of what an actual twelve-year-old Bonnie would be thinking or feeling when dealing with what was going on around her. There was no growth in the characters or a theme that was clear.

After reading twenty-five percent into the story, it was unclear what this was specifically about due to of a lot of irrelevant narration and unfocused plot. Around seventy-five percent into the story we began to see some semblance to what the book’s description highlighted. However, an unclear plot surrounded by various misuses of grammar and extraneous narratives leaves this reader lost and disjointed.

Lies and Discord: A Novella regarding Family Secrets
Rating based on five stars: ⭐⭐