'Coy', yes Sara, that's a good word for Six-Thirty. Like you, I found Lessons unsatisfactory, in part because I am not a fan of the 'prologue' set up - a scene in the present followed by a long journey into the past to bring us back to that first encounter with the protagonist. There were a few too many detours along the way (symptom perhaps of the 'written by committee' effect), for example, the rowing, but maybe that was just me - I felt cold and tired just reading those passages!
Good point Robert. Yes I think a short interlude or aside from the 'animal' perspective - or plant why not? - is a salutary reminder to us that there is another way to look at the world. Certainly, although not written from the perspective of trees, Richard Powers' The Overstory gave me a new insight into trees and their capacity to communicate.
Hi Aisling, I loved The Friend, but you are right, it was not narrated by the dog. I found Six-Thirty in Lessons to be a coy device. I didn't finish the book, which seemed to me to be written by a committee rather than having a singular voice. I will read anything Sigrid Nunez writes; not so Ms. Garmus.
I think one of the great potentials for a canine or other non-human narrator is defamiliarization. In the Kafka story, for example, the dog narrator sees birds as “flying dogs.” A move like that might prompt us to consider our easy anthropomorphic view of the world around us. As you suggest, Aisling, this may work better in the short form, with a law of diminishing returns in a novel.
'Coy', yes Sara, that's a good word for Six-Thirty. Like you, I found Lessons unsatisfactory, in part because I am not a fan of the 'prologue' set up - a scene in the present followed by a long journey into the past to bring us back to that first encounter with the protagonist. There were a few too many detours along the way (symptom perhaps of the 'written by committee' effect), for example, the rowing, but maybe that was just me - I felt cold and tired just reading those passages!
Good point Robert. Yes I think a short interlude or aside from the 'animal' perspective - or plant why not? - is a salutary reminder to us that there is another way to look at the world. Certainly, although not written from the perspective of trees, Richard Powers' The Overstory gave me a new insight into trees and their capacity to communicate.
Hi Aisling, I loved The Friend, but you are right, it was not narrated by the dog. I found Six-Thirty in Lessons to be a coy device. I didn't finish the book, which seemed to me to be written by a committee rather than having a singular voice. I will read anything Sigrid Nunez writes; not so Ms. Garmus.
I think one of the great potentials for a canine or other non-human narrator is defamiliarization. In the Kafka story, for example, the dog narrator sees birds as “flying dogs.” A move like that might prompt us to consider our easy anthropomorphic view of the world around us. As you suggest, Aisling, this may work better in the short form, with a law of diminishing returns in a novel.