Who is telling the story 

and why does it matter?

Recently, I have been writing about the narrative techniques of contemporary novelists, noting the trend towards multiple first person points of view, often in alternating chapters, so I was intrigued by the September 11 “Critic’s Take” essay in the New York Times Book Review, in which Elliott Holt writes about “the return of omniscience.”  Holt discusses Cynthia Ng’s Everything I Never Told You as an example. Not only does the narrative voice of this novel move in and out of the heads of various characters, but Ng also utilizes the technique of prolepsis (a term I learned a few years ago in a training) – jumping briefly ahead, relating events that haven’t happened or won’t happen until much later.  As Holt notes, the book begins with this:  “Lydia is dead.  But they don’t know this yet.”  He includes other examples such as Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies and Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.  His analysis of the effects of the use of omniscience is also interesting.  He suggests that it provides “authority and scope,” and “that it reinforces that we are reading fiction.”  He leaves the reader with an intriguing premise, that “In this era of omnipotent smartness. . . Technology forces us to see the world – and construct the stories we tell about it – differently.”

To read the essay: http://nyti.ms/2cuNAvx

What I'm Reading Now -- The Mare and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, parts 1 and 2

They have more in common than you might think

I do not usually write about books until I have finished reading them, but I have two going right now that strike me as an interesting pairing as they are similar in theme but very different in form and reader experience.  I am listening to The Mare by Mary Gaitskill, an audio book that I downloaded from my public library.  Listening to books as opposed to decoding language visually automatically creates a different “reading”; while it is much more difficult to go back and re-read or, rather re-listen, to passages and thus to appreciate fully the beauty of language used, there is an added quality when the voice of the reader is so effective that you forget that it is not the character(s) actually speaking.  In the case of this novel, there are four readers who alternatively narrate the chapters and do so with accents and intonations that make the book come alive.

Meanwhile, I am reading in hardback book form the eighth in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 and 2.  Although the cover artwork resembles the rest of the books in the series and J.K. Rowling’s name features on the cover, this is neither a novel nor actually a book by her.  It is the script to a play that opened in London at the end of July.  As far as I can tell from my research, Rowling collaborated on the ideas, but a writer named Jack Thorne wrote it.  The experience of reading a play, even one about The Boy Who Lived, is a far cry from the witty, rich prose of a Rowling novel.  (And by the way, why do we read plays?  Aren’t they meant to be seen? ) This script is particularly unusual in that there are so many scenes that are seldom more than a couple of pages long.  Thus, conversations are fairly short and the setting switches around so fast you need flue powder to keep up.  There are few stage directions and characters are a bit flat, which I suspect is not necessarily true if you are watching actors breathing life into them.  I find myself drawing on my visual memories of the movies. 

So, very different reading experiences, but yet they have a common focus:  an adolescent who is struggling to find his or her place in the world.  In Harry Potter, it is 19 years after the end of the last story.  Harry is a 40 -year old parent with three children.  His middle son, Albus, is the problem child; angry, unhappy and resentful, Albus feels misunderstood and, at heart, not valued for who he is but rather for his famous connection.  Part of the problem is that he doesn’t know exactly who he is.  A bit of a social pariah, his only friend is, ironically, the son of Draco, Scorpius Malfoy.  When Albus overhears a conversation about the discovery of a time-turner (a magical device that allows the user to move back and forth through time), he sees this as his chance to be a hero and, with Scorpius, devises a plan to rescue Cedrid Diggory, the boy who died in the Goblet of Fire at the hands of Voldemort.

One of the main voices in The Mare is Velvet, a poor Dominican girl living with her mother and little brother in Brooklyn.  Her mother struggles to financially make ends meet and takes out her frustrations on Velvet.  Like Albus, Velvet feels like an outcast at school and is often the butt of teasing and cruelty.  Her life begins to change when, through the Fresh Air Fund, she is matched with a couple, Paul and Ginger, in upstate New York, for two weeks.  Ginger takes Velvet to the local stable where she begins riding lessons, learns how to care for the horses, and develops a bond with an abused but spirited horse with whom she seems to identify.  Things do not get immediately better for Velvet but the reader/listener sees that the horses will be the key to Velvet’s emergence. 

While both stories focus on the adolescents, there is an adult storyline as well.  Ginger is unable to have children of her own and her husband has been resistant to adopting.  In Velvet, she finds an outlet for her need to mother, a situation that Paul finds dangerous.  Ginger increasingly wants to extend Velvet’s stays with them and extends invitations for weekends and holidays.  Harry, now a part of the Wizard Ministry that has spent the last 19 years righting the wizarding world after the death of Voldemort and the defeat of the Death Eaters in book 7. As the play begins, he suddenly wakes up with his scar – the mark given to him by Voldemort which signaled Voldemort’s presence when it pained him – hurting.  Does this mean that the world’s worst wizard is back?  So far, (I am only halfway), these concerns are equal to Harry’s worries over Albus and their lack of a relationship.  He wants desperately to be a father that Albus loves, not unlike Ginger’s need for daughterly love from Velvet.

Both books speak to the universal desire to love and be loved.  If you are a Harry Potter fan, of course you will read the play, because you can’t stand not to, but I look forward to the production making its way to the States; only then will the story take on resonance.  The Mare, a far more nuanced work, explores the complexities of love, the divides of race and wealth and the relationship between frustration and cruelty.