Can one turn too many in one sonnet overwhelm the form? That's what I think is going on in this one, where the noirish light-and-shadow approach to narrative angles and emotional corners seems to obscure the more leisurely hinge of the sonnet form itself. Not that I am opposed to stretching that form, to making it yield fresh insights; but in this case the form seems to have become irrelevant, subservient as it were to another form that is interesting in its own right but perhaps incompatible with the sonnet's.
Abruptly compressed, this does manipulate its noir echo well. And yet even on that level I am suspicious because of the somewhat mundane subject matter--a story in which I confess I do not develop much keen interest--. In noir the crosscutting and crooked framing and dark corners work because of the momentum of a mystery that tempts one forward to plumb its tilted depths. But the set-up here doesn't lure this reader on in that way, and so the editing seems artificial somehow, and leaves me distracted from Annette--with only the house as a main character. Such a deflecting of focus, well, that's an artful technique, and in the proper context I might enjoy it more. But here that fracturing of narrative expectation seems at odds with the sonnet form into which it has been wedged and splintered.
This sounds more negative than I mean it to be, given that many of the aforementioned angles and corners are confidently handled and that the rhymes are full of smoldering verve. The voice is wry and knowing, but in the end I'm not convinced that what it so caustically knows is more than meets the ear.
Nemo
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