Reading for Story vs. Reading for--Reading
I'm currently about 100 pages into a 250-page book (in ebook form, specifically Nook format) and I'm finally getting into it. In fact, now that I've learned a lot more about the title character, I'm probably unhealthily over-identifying with that character (because there is, of course, a HEALTHY way of over-identifying with a fictional character).
The reason it has taken me about 40% of the book to finally get into it, I believe, is the format in which it is written. Now, I have nothing against books narrated by someone who isn't the central character in the book; after all, apart from whatever type of trainwreck the new Great Gatsby film may be, the book is a classic, and is also written from the PoV of someone observing the title character, not from the perspective of the title character. My favorite novel of all time, A Prayer for Owen Meany, is written in the same way. No, that specifically isn't the problem I'm having. The issue with this book is that it is written from a LOT of different PoVs, and the individual character of each narrator is rather slow to come through, or even who each person really is and how they fit into this world. I'm talking about a combination of emails, inter-office memos, communication to doctors, notes sent home to parents from a school principal, etc., strung together by some very disjointed narrative from the title character's daughter. And finally, a letter written by the title character herself.
I feel like shouting into my poor little Nook, "Quit with the gimmickry already, just tell me the damn story!" Because that's what this structure for the book feels like--a gimmick. And not in a good way. I suppose it was also a gimmick for William Wharton to structure Birdy with alternating plain and italic typefaces to delineate the narratives from Birdy and his best friend from childhood, as the author slowly told the story of how Birdy became catatonic after fighting in the Viet Nam war. But Wharton's use of language is riveting; the writing AND the story-telling are both so compelling that I don't care that I just learned something in one character's narrative that opens up a huge number of questions that I may or may not get answered in the next block of narrative from the other character. I no longer completely care about how fast I get the story because the journey there is so enjoyable that the story is almost a fringe-benefit of being able to read such fabulous writing.
That is not the case with this book. The constant switch in narrative voices (which isn't even always completely convincing--there honestly isn't enough true difference between each person to make it believable that all of these things were written by different people) and formats is merely irritating. There's no interesting use of language or any particularly lovely turns of phrase. I know that this sort of thing is popular in publishing these days--first person narratives in particular (though the Hunger Games series really suffered from this, where it was irksome to me from beginning to end) seem to be huge--and books written in the form of Tweets, emails, text-messages, etc., seem to be all the rage. This book isn't quite at that level (despite being largely emails) but it's still irritating the hell out of me.
Can't anyone just tell a damn story anymore, with a straightforward narrative, and without a bunch of gimmicks? Please tell me if you've read something good that is gimmick-less. I'm not even convinced I'll be able to finish this book--my patience is already pretty frazzled by the nonsense. And I hope to heaven that this trend doesn't mean that if I ever want to be published I'll need to pull crappy stunts like this, because I just don't see that happening. Are slush-pile readers really so bored that this is the only kind of thing that holds their attention? Perhaps I shouldn't think about that--too depressing.
Next someone will tell me that I have to write chapters in 140-character bursts. Yeah. Me. Hahahahaha. SO not happening!
The reason it has taken me about 40% of the book to finally get into it, I believe, is the format in which it is written. Now, I have nothing against books narrated by someone who isn't the central character in the book; after all, apart from whatever type of trainwreck the new Great Gatsby film may be, the book is a classic, and is also written from the PoV of someone observing the title character, not from the perspective of the title character. My favorite novel of all time, A Prayer for Owen Meany, is written in the same way. No, that specifically isn't the problem I'm having. The issue with this book is that it is written from a LOT of different PoVs, and the individual character of each narrator is rather slow to come through, or even who each person really is and how they fit into this world. I'm talking about a combination of emails, inter-office memos, communication to doctors, notes sent home to parents from a school principal, etc., strung together by some very disjointed narrative from the title character's daughter. And finally, a letter written by the title character herself.
I feel like shouting into my poor little Nook, "Quit with the gimmickry already, just tell me the damn story!" Because that's what this structure for the book feels like--a gimmick. And not in a good way. I suppose it was also a gimmick for William Wharton to structure Birdy with alternating plain and italic typefaces to delineate the narratives from Birdy and his best friend from childhood, as the author slowly told the story of how Birdy became catatonic after fighting in the Viet Nam war. But Wharton's use of language is riveting; the writing AND the story-telling are both so compelling that I don't care that I just learned something in one character's narrative that opens up a huge number of questions that I may or may not get answered in the next block of narrative from the other character. I no longer completely care about how fast I get the story because the journey there is so enjoyable that the story is almost a fringe-benefit of being able to read such fabulous writing.
That is not the case with this book. The constant switch in narrative voices (which isn't even always completely convincing--there honestly isn't enough true difference between each person to make it believable that all of these things were written by different people) and formats is merely irritating. There's no interesting use of language or any particularly lovely turns of phrase. I know that this sort of thing is popular in publishing these days--first person narratives in particular (though the Hunger Games series really suffered from this, where it was irksome to me from beginning to end) seem to be huge--and books written in the form of Tweets, emails, text-messages, etc., seem to be all the rage. This book isn't quite at that level (despite being largely emails) but it's still irritating the hell out of me.
Can't anyone just tell a damn story anymore, with a straightforward narrative, and without a bunch of gimmicks? Please tell me if you've read something good that is gimmick-less. I'm not even convinced I'll be able to finish this book--my patience is already pretty frazzled by the nonsense. And I hope to heaven that this trend doesn't mean that if I ever want to be published I'll need to pull crappy stunts like this, because I just don't see that happening. Are slush-pile readers really so bored that this is the only kind of thing that holds their attention? Perhaps I shouldn't think about that--too depressing.
Next someone will tell me that I have to write chapters in 140-character bursts. Yeah. Me. Hahahahaha. SO not happening!