I just posted my response to this Nebula-award winning novel. Now I want to make a more personal comment about my reaction to the book.
One reason I comment on other books is that reading analytically helps me see what works and what doesn’t work in a story or a novel. Theoretically, I can then apply that skill to my own work.
I commented that The Windup Girl had a plot that was slack in the first half, and I found that to be a problem. Let me put that remark in some context. The draft of the novel I am currently working on has enough slack in the plot to host a double-Dutch jump-rope tournament.
While I was reading Windup Girl, and while I was drafting my post, I had two epiphanies; two places where scenes in my book that are fun but do not advance the story can be cut or at least condensed. One involves our heroes stopping to buy a black market car. At one point, something happened there that made that scene necessary; but now it isn’t. It’s about seven pages–I can cut it to one paragraph.
I would not have made that connection, tiny though it is, is I had not been looking at Bacigalupi’s novel through the lens of a tighter plot. Thank you, Mr. Bacigalupi!