What on earth is up with all the first person stuff? I can manage first person with a few writers, but really, I mostly avoid books (fiction, that is) written like that.
Over and over I'll check out a new (to me) author only to find the pestilential "I" strewn over the first page.
Does everyone else really like books written in the first person?
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4 comments:
It depends. Most of the time I don't mind it too much. What bugs me alot are the books where not only is the story told in the first person, but it jumps around to different characters using the first person, so that you keep having to jump into another body. For goodness' sake, I'm confused enough in my own skin.
My other pet peeve is too much colloquial slang and accent-- these things are necessary in some books in order to paint a character, but whenthe entire cast speaks in "bayou South" or Downeast twang", I can't read it. so I don't bother.~Eleanor
I don't mind books written in first person, but if it's a fad to do so and everyone's doing it, that smacks of lack of creativity. First person is effective for some things, less for others. Some books balance it well: Wuthering Heights for example is technically written in first person, but so much of the book doesn't actually involve the narrator (he's relating a story he was told by others) that it's effectively third person through most of the book, and then switches back to first person when the narrator pops back into the story, once you get caught up to the point in time at which the narrator hear the backstory, and then the story moves forward from there. It's a neat trick, and doesn't come off as so much of a gimmick as when "everyone does it" in modern popular fiction.
Mercy Maud, Eleanor, what a frightful idea. Fortunately I've not come across a multiperson first-person book!
That'd be far too mixing for me.
It's been awhile since I've read one (the language can be raw), but Joan Hess's Maggody series combines first and third voice quite successfully, IMO.
It's been much, much longer since I read Wuthering Heights. Probably ought to locate a copy and reread it.
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