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ownDock.net recently published a readers’ guide to the Oriental that is depicted in ‘The Best of Me,’ the latest novel by best-selling author and New Bern resident, Nicholas Sparks.

Some readers wrote in to say that after reading “The Best of Me”, they thought the romance novel made the town look bad. That is not our quibble with the book. To be a smear, the author would first have to provide a sense of place. Oriental has a palpable one, but “The Best of Me” failed to capture it.

Instead, it feels as if the Oriental in “The Best of Me” were popped out with a cookie cutter — wrong side of the tracks there, perky barristas at the coffee house there, a quarter century of pent-up lust here, and here, and here. The resulting town called Oriental could’ve been just about anywhere, hundreds of miles from the Pamlico Sound.

That was our quibble.

TownDock.net reader Sean Prendergast in Morehead City adopted a tone of mock indignation when he wrote in:

“I could see by your scathing review of Mr. Sparks’ novel that his work, so meant to tug wistfully on silken heartstrings, was met by the manila dock lines of your heart.”

We considered for a moment the fragments of jute coursing through our veins, but then we read on as the gentle reader in Morehead offered up a writing sample of his own. Sean describes it as “a passage from the sequel to “The Best of Me” ….perhaps more attuned to the “Real Oriental.” Read on:

“I’ll take flavor #18A,” said Mooney as he set his eye wistfully on the
aging barista’s bosom resting just below her belt.

Carefully setting a lock of blue hair away from her cheek she replied, “Oh
Mooney, nobody’s asked for flavor #18A since Herman did, so many summers
ago. I thought he was so dreamy. I was a girl then, and coffee was still
imported in burlap sacks to the Town Dock by the close-knit families who
have been here for generations.”

“Well, Mavis, that was a long time ago, I mean a real long time ago, when
we’s was all like little sucklin’ pigs, but now we’s all growed up and we’s
turned into real hawgs.”

“But Hermy was so dreamy, and the way he sipped his #18A, it reminded me
of my father.”

“You know, Mavis, there’s a feller, goes by the name of Herman, works for
the real estate company, cleaning toilets and loafin’. Was a successful
doctor turned banker in Raleigh, but what with the economy and all, that’s
all the work he could find.”

“Could it be, my Hermy??”

Look at you, tearin’ up. Here, have a tissue.

Creative TownDock.net readers must have other stories of the Village out there that could riff off of the romance-in-Oriental that now sits high on the New York Times Bestseller list. Ever want to write a scene? Here’s your chance. We can’t promise a publishing contract, but we can publish your efforts here.

It can be a sequel. It can be a prequel. Points awarded for tucking in those details of Oriental and Pamlico County life, right in to the dialogue. Extra points for creating living, breathing characters, for showing rather than merely telling. And for using verbs instead of adverbs and adjectives. But hey, that’s just our Manila Heart talking……

Send in your writing to info@towndock.net.

Posted Tuesday November 15, 2011 by Melinda Penkava