Who is this person telling the story?
And do I trust them?
Any time I begin reading a new book there’s a period of adjustment when I struggle to feel comfortable with the narrator’s voice, and to trust that I’m in good hands. It’s almost like making a new friend. You kind of wonder if and when you want to see them again.
Occasionally I find myself caught in an internal fight not to put the book down. I usually stick with the book anyway, and before too long, the narrator and I are hand-in-hand. If it doesn’t happen by the third chapter, I set it aside.
There’s only been a few books when I felt engaged right from the opening pages. Most of Anne Tyler’s books hook me right away. Dorothy Alison’s Bastard Out of Carolina immediately captivated me in the first three pages with an engaging narrator.
Slow starts
One of my all-time favorite books, Gilead by Marilyn Robinson, was an initial turn off. I read the first two chapters, found the narration cumbersome, and set the book aside. However, Robinson uses a rhetorical device, second-person address that I wanted to try in my own writing. So I forced myself to to start over and continue reading. Gilead ended up being my favorite book.
Recently I’ve read a handful of books where the narrator does something or behaves in a way that seems so improbable that I lose trust and have to set the book aside. Honestly I hate when that happens.
This feeling, that behaviors are somehow inexplicable, is different from an unreliable narrator, whose point of view we know we cannot trust because they have a flawed relationship to reality.
Do you ever find yourself struggling with the narration in a new book? How much do you give a narrator before you stop reading?
