![]() ![]() The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid Those ideas fascinate me: the choices we make and actions we take that define us. After he’d walked away he heard the sound of a body hitting water and screaming, but still did not do anything to check on her or help, and the incident leads, eventually, to a downward spiral as he struggles to come to terms with the truth it reveals about him. Eventually he recounts a crucial moment in his life when he came across a lone woman in black, poised on a bridge, and instinctively sensed something was wrong – but did nothing. Though rather than a haunted sailor with a tale of misdeeds on the high seas, and the repercussions and penitence, Camus’s narrator was a Parisian lawyer, and initially recounts his glory days as “a man at the height of his powers, in perfect health, generously gifted, skilled in bodily exercises as in those of the mind.” But he too is haunted, not by an action taken – the shooting of an albatross – but by his own inaction. The opening to The Fall has something of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner about it: the sense that somebody is being accosted to be an audience, to hear a story and a confession. Those ideas fascinate me: the choices we make and actions we take that define us.” Both ‘The Sepulchre’ and ‘Posthumous’ begin with an identical line: “This is how it was, or will be.” I just loved that confidence – her flair and swagger and panache.Īfter he’d walked away he heard the sound of a body hitting water and screaming, but still did not do anything to check on her or help. Several stories are written in second person, and under the guidance of Oates ‘you’ are made to identify with a murder victim, a patient in intensive care, and a woman searching her family home for her missing father. I was intrigued by the allusion to Poe in the title, but nothing prepared me for the mix of literary horror, fantasy and gothic surrealism, or the incredible range and virtuosity of Oates. I still remember the moment I came across this book, in a (now sadly closed) bookstore on Lonsdale Avenue back in North Vancouver. ![]() The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates In reflecting on the experience and selecting this list, I’ve picked examples of second person – and variations on it, such as first-person direct address – that have stayed with me, and others which served as influences and sources of inspiration along the way. The narrative voice was compelling and liberating, and the rest of the novel burned through me and flowed very quickly. But that opening was so effective, and the process of drafting it so thrilling, I found I couldn’t stop. The opening chapter, in which a young woman witnesses the death of her husband in a random stabbing on a London bus, was conceived in second person to serve as a tense and gripping opener, the classic ‘hook’ after which the novel would settle into a more traditional narrative style. It was more a process of intuition and discovery. But rules, as we all know, are made to be broken.Īll the same, in developing my new novel, Your Still Beating Heart, I can’t make any grandiose claim about setting out to break the rules by using second-person techniques. I’m one of the culprits: I can recall instances of guiding students away from writing in second person. At least, that’s traditionally been one of the standard (and overused) ‘rules’ of Creative Writing programmes, along with other gold-minted mantras like ‘show don’t tell’ and ‘write what you know’. For that reason, fledgling riders should best avoid trying such stunts, just as fledging writers are often advised against using second person. If you get some wobbles, become disorientated and lose control, there’s the risk of an embarrassing fail, with melodramatic results: tumbling and flopping, flailing all over the place, leaving a chaotic mess behind you on the slope (or on the page). If you pull it off, for the audience it’s breathtaking and exhilarating. ![]() Or, to apply an analogy more suited to my West Coast background (I’ve never tried any circus stunts, let alone a high-wire act), writing in second person is like attempting an audacious snowboarding trick. Second-person narration, in which the author uses the pronoun ‘you’ to seemingly address the reader and draw them into the story, can be a bit of a high-wire balancing act. Beautiful writing… stunning.” Miriam Toews ![]()
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