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The story behind this is fine, but there's enough glossed over that I don't have a strong sense of what actually happened. For David, yes, but not whatever the rock is. There's not enough about its background to really care either way about what happens to it. The bigger point is whether David is a good enough person to help it, but still, the emotional context for what the ending means probably should have been stronger. On the mechanical side, this needs a lot of editing work. I'm guessing it was written close to the deadline and unedited.
The writing is the real draw here, as the characters come alive very well. It's not exactly a new plot, and it's fairly noncommittal about whether it comes to a conclusion. Definitely still open-ended but with a particular direction firmly suggested, at least in a plot sense. Though this is more about their emotional engagement, and that comes to a less definite direction. I almost feel like it's glib in the end, Skink just saying of course everything will be alright and nothing hinting a possibility of otherwise, even though they have yet to start working their way through this. So, great character work and language use, but the plot doesn't go anywhere I didn't expect it to, especially as hinted at by the title. And that title initially had me wondering if this would have something to do with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Hmm. There is a bit of a plot here about a guy moving back to his childhood home where his mother died, but other than that, it seems to be entirely about world building and creating atmosphere. I liked it on both points, but when I got to the end, I wondered, for all that the story is mostly journeys, where this journey was taking me. The protagonist doesn't seem to have undergone any change in his attitude toward this place, his mother, or dead people in general. So it's just more a "day in the life" thing than anything else.