As some of my reviews will testify (e.g. My Real Children; Indigo; Hidden Knowledge), I can feel disorientated when a novel fails to unfold according to my expectations. But isn’t that often the case initially when we come to read fiction? Unless it’s ploddingly formulaic there’s an interval, before we settle into both story and style, when we don’t know where we are. Part of the pleasure of opening a new book is that sense that, despite the clues from title, cover and blurb, it could lead us somewhere new. But, as I’ve intimated time and again in my reviews, there needs to be balance between novelty and familiarity, and each of us have our own preferences for where we position ourselves between them.
Completing the initial round of my publisher’s edits for my forthcoming novel, Sugar and Snails, I’m reminded of the potential for disorientation I’ve built into the story. My narrator, Diana, has a secret she is unable to share with the reader initially; when you get it, you might look back on what she’s previously told you in a new light. I have to hope I’ve hit a reasonable balance between surprise and security, but I know it won’t work for all.
Completing the initial round of my publisher’s edits for my forthcoming novel, Sugar and Snails, I’m reminded of the potential for disorientation I’ve built into the story. My narrator, Diana, has a secret she is unable to share with the reader initially; when you get it, you might look back on what she’s previously told you in a new light. I have to hope I’ve hit a reasonable balance between surprise and security, but I know it won’t work for all.
While it’s still early days for my current WIP, Closure risks being even more disorientating. At the moment, there are three point of view characters, and I’m toying with opening with Matilda, a long-term psychiatric patient with a shaky hold on reality. It’s going to need an awful lot more thought and work, but I’m inspired by others, such as Costa first novel award winning Emma Healey who has written an entire in the voice of an elderly woman with dementia. I also remind myself that readers love an unreliable narrator.
When Charli set her latest flash fiction challenge to write a 99-word story about disorientation, I had almost too many ideas. I could’ve based my response around almost any other novels for the recent review challenge, from the fakery of F, through the mystery of Milly’s missing mother and Rachel’s alcoholic absences, to the enigma of Alice’s imaginary friend. Yet, perhaps perversely, I’ve taken my inspiration from a novel I’ve yet to share on the blog:
Some put their faith in gold, God and governments; I thanked gravity for my anchor in this turbulent world. Friends and lovers might desert me, but Mother Earth was always there. April to October I went barefoot: pounding on asphalt, shuffling through sand or squelching mud between my toes, corporeally connected to solid ground.
I thought I’d gone mad when I heard the rumbling in her bowels. I never imagined the earth would betray me, let her surface crack like an egg. Soil in my mouth, grass in my hair, feet touching only air, I never dreamt I’d survive.
You’ll find a better description of the mental and physical disorientation of living through an earthquake in the novel God Loves Haiti and (big fanfare) one lucky reader will receive a free copy courtesy of the publisher when I post my review in a few days’ time.
Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with links to some more of my attempts to explore disorientation through fiction: The Neck features a young woman who wakes up on the morning of her wedding to find that her neck has grown as long as her arm; Habeas Corpus is about a man struggling to adapt to ordinary life after a terrifying kidnapping; Telling the Parents is about a couple’s attempt to comprehend their son’s shocking news; A Place of Safety concerns a woman unable to adapt to the modern world and No Milk or Sugar is an amusing take on dementia. If I haven’t already exhausted you, you might also be interested in my posts Where’s my mind gone? and Ideas that blow your mind on similar themes.
When Charli set her latest flash fiction challenge to write a 99-word story about disorientation, I had almost too many ideas. I could’ve based my response around almost any other novels for the recent review challenge, from the fakery of F, through the mystery of Milly’s missing mother and Rachel’s alcoholic absences, to the enigma of Alice’s imaginary friend. Yet, perhaps perversely, I’ve taken my inspiration from a novel I’ve yet to share on the blog:
Some put their faith in gold, God and governments; I thanked gravity for my anchor in this turbulent world. Friends and lovers might desert me, but Mother Earth was always there. April to October I went barefoot: pounding on asphalt, shuffling through sand or squelching mud between my toes, corporeally connected to solid ground.
I thought I’d gone mad when I heard the rumbling in her bowels. I never imagined the earth would betray me, let her surface crack like an egg. Soil in my mouth, grass in my hair, feet touching only air, I never dreamt I’d survive.
You’ll find a better description of the mental and physical disorientation of living through an earthquake in the novel God Loves Haiti and (big fanfare) one lucky reader will receive a free copy courtesy of the publisher when I post my review in a few days’ time.
Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with links to some more of my attempts to explore disorientation through fiction: The Neck features a young woman who wakes up on the morning of her wedding to find that her neck has grown as long as her arm; Habeas Corpus is about a man struggling to adapt to ordinary life after a terrifying kidnapping; Telling the Parents is about a couple’s attempt to comprehend their son’s shocking news; A Place of Safety concerns a woman unable to adapt to the modern world and No Milk or Sugar is an amusing take on dementia. If I haven’t already exhausted you, you might also be interested in my posts Where’s my mind gone? and Ideas that blow your mind on similar themes.
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