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