Ruby Soames's Blog - Posts Tagged "novels"
Just a Kindle in the wind...
This year I’ve been visiting a lot of bookshops to organise readings/signings for my novel and I’ve found each as fearful and defeated as the next in their efforts to ward off extinction. They are fast becoming as quaint as loose-leaf tea leaves in china pots, but it wasn't until I was standing in Union Square, San Francisco, looking up at the big, empty, boarded-up building that used to be Borders, that I realised we were way past the turning point of how publishing was, to what reading is now.
The demise of books is no reflection on whether people are reading or not. Everywhere I look, heads are down in iPads, Nooks, Kindles – (some gadgets I don't even know the names of and won’t bother learning as it’s all changing so fast). E-readers converted those who already read books and sucked in others who took up reading as an excuse to get the latest toy. Reading, as I knew it, is definitely out, but reading, as it will be, is definitely the new thing.
Never someone to be left behind, I was even on a waiting list for one of the first Kindles in Europe. And this trip was my first without lugging around a case full of books; I could download whatever took my fancy in under 3 seconds, devour it late into the night without having my husband scowling at me, and! nor did I need to take my reading glasses - the print just gets bigger and bigger as I get older and older!
Did I enjoy the books as much as ever? I skim read more, my boredom threshold has sunk to a pretty intolerant low and I missed passing books on. No paperbacks greased with coconut oil, no phone numbers of new friends scribbled on the back, no receipts from restaurants marking pages, all the signs of great beach reads. I always used to take along one ‘Classic’ novel every summer but that’s been replaced with a Mystery/Thriller, the type I would have passed up before. Bookstores are gone, taking with them, patience, time and a certain amount of emotional commitment to the novel. How we read has definitely and irrevocably changed, but I wonder how much of what we read?
The demise of books is no reflection on whether people are reading or not. Everywhere I look, heads are down in iPads, Nooks, Kindles – (some gadgets I don't even know the names of and won’t bother learning as it’s all changing so fast). E-readers converted those who already read books and sucked in others who took up reading as an excuse to get the latest toy. Reading, as I knew it, is definitely out, but reading, as it will be, is definitely the new thing.
Never someone to be left behind, I was even on a waiting list for one of the first Kindles in Europe. And this trip was my first without lugging around a case full of books; I could download whatever took my fancy in under 3 seconds, devour it late into the night without having my husband scowling at me, and! nor did I need to take my reading glasses - the print just gets bigger and bigger as I get older and older!
Did I enjoy the books as much as ever? I skim read more, my boredom threshold has sunk to a pretty intolerant low and I missed passing books on. No paperbacks greased with coconut oil, no phone numbers of new friends scribbled on the back, no receipts from restaurants marking pages, all the signs of great beach reads. I always used to take along one ‘Classic’ novel every summer but that’s been replaced with a Mystery/Thriller, the type I would have passed up before. Bookstores are gone, taking with them, patience, time and a certain amount of emotional commitment to the novel. How we read has definitely and irrevocably changed, but I wonder how much of what we read?
Hey, you!
I wanted to write about the sudden rise of the second-person narrative. Have you noticed it or am I imagining things?
‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’ was the first book that I was really conscious of as having been written in the second person narrative. The novel is presented as a letter from a mother to her husband after the horrifying event of their son’s high-school killing spree. 'We Need to Talk About Kevin’ had such a polemic, shocking and emotive subject matter that the story overtook the book itself – and that’s not bad – Lionel Shriver is now a household name and the book is a film – but I believe this book marked a new way of writing.
Shriver’s writing makes implicit the evolving relationship between the reader and the writer. The modern reader is no longer able to swallow the idea of an omniscient narrator, even a first person narrative can get tiresome, and now telling the story is demanding more sophisticated literary devices.
Over the books I’ve read this year, so many have been 'told' in the second person – as letters, diaries, confessions. One can’t ignore the author’s awareness and need to hold the attention of its audience, so much so, the actual stories are addressed ‘you’.
Last year, ‘Sister’ by Rosamund Lupton, a psychological thriller which did eerily well, about a ‘dead’ sister whose murder is investigated by the living sister. The story is told in the first person and is written to ‘you’. Rosamund Lupton’s disappointing follow up, ‘Afterwards’ was also written to ‘you’ – the main character is in limbo having been through a fatal fire – accidental or on purpose and by whom? is the question of the story. The book is written from the POV of the wife to her living husband – the ‘you’. (Yes, she’s a ghost and if you haven’t read it, don’t bother.)
I’ve just finished Snowdrops by A D Miller which I really enjoyed but couldn’t help notice that this too, was written to a ‘you’. The ‘You’ is not really explained but inferred to be the woman the protagonist later married. He is finally telling her/you the story so that she can understand his past, and him. It’s a completely unnecessary device, neither adding or taking away from the story. So why’d he do it?
Of course, I’m interested in the ‘You’ because my novel was also written to a ‘you’. ‘Seven Days to Tell You’ is written to Kate’s husband who returns after three years of being ‘missing’.
Kate had married a wild, sexy Frenchman and thought she had the perfect marriage until he went out one day and didn’t come back. Three years later, she wakes with him in her bed - he asks for her forgiveness and gives her a week to decide if she still loves him. During that week, she describes her love for him directly to him.
And isn’t that the way one thinks when one’s in love? The other person is a ‘you’ and everything we do relates to the lovers’ personal narrative. So for me, a story about love could only be written directly to the beloved. Like most love songs.
I'd like to put forward the theory that in novels today, the standard genres are breaking down so much that there’s a place for the second-person narrative, the ‘you’. It’s almost like the book won’t work anymore, it has to feel like a personal letter, a journal, a piece of reality TV.
It’s just a thought, how about you?
Seven Days to Tell YouWe Need to Talk About Kevin
‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’ was the first book that I was really conscious of as having been written in the second person narrative. The novel is presented as a letter from a mother to her husband after the horrifying event of their son’s high-school killing spree. 'We Need to Talk About Kevin’ had such a polemic, shocking and emotive subject matter that the story overtook the book itself – and that’s not bad – Lionel Shriver is now a household name and the book is a film – but I believe this book marked a new way of writing.
Shriver’s writing makes implicit the evolving relationship between the reader and the writer. The modern reader is no longer able to swallow the idea of an omniscient narrator, even a first person narrative can get tiresome, and now telling the story is demanding more sophisticated literary devices.
Over the books I’ve read this year, so many have been 'told' in the second person – as letters, diaries, confessions. One can’t ignore the author’s awareness and need to hold the attention of its audience, so much so, the actual stories are addressed ‘you’.
Last year, ‘Sister’ by Rosamund Lupton, a psychological thriller which did eerily well, about a ‘dead’ sister whose murder is investigated by the living sister. The story is told in the first person and is written to ‘you’. Rosamund Lupton’s disappointing follow up, ‘Afterwards’ was also written to ‘you’ – the main character is in limbo having been through a fatal fire – accidental or on purpose and by whom? is the question of the story. The book is written from the POV of the wife to her living husband – the ‘you’. (Yes, she’s a ghost and if you haven’t read it, don’t bother.)
I’ve just finished Snowdrops by A D Miller which I really enjoyed but couldn’t help notice that this too, was written to a ‘you’. The ‘You’ is not really explained but inferred to be the woman the protagonist later married. He is finally telling her/you the story so that she can understand his past, and him. It’s a completely unnecessary device, neither adding or taking away from the story. So why’d he do it?
Of course, I’m interested in the ‘You’ because my novel was also written to a ‘you’. ‘Seven Days to Tell You’ is written to Kate’s husband who returns after three years of being ‘missing’.
Kate had married a wild, sexy Frenchman and thought she had the perfect marriage until he went out one day and didn’t come back. Three years later, she wakes with him in her bed - he asks for her forgiveness and gives her a week to decide if she still loves him. During that week, she describes her love for him directly to him.
And isn’t that the way one thinks when one’s in love? The other person is a ‘you’ and everything we do relates to the lovers’ personal narrative. So for me, a story about love could only be written directly to the beloved. Like most love songs.
I'd like to put forward the theory that in novels today, the standard genres are breaking down so much that there’s a place for the second-person narrative, the ‘you’. It’s almost like the book won’t work anymore, it has to feel like a personal letter, a journal, a piece of reality TV.
It’s just a thought, how about you?
Seven Days to Tell YouWe Need to Talk About Kevin
