Book Review Saturday – ‘Corbenic’

Earlier in the week, I promised you more about Catherine Fisher and her marvellous, heart-rending novel Corbenic. So, here you go.

Red Fox (imprint of Random House Children’s Books), 2002, edition of ‘Corbenic’
Image credit: SJ O’Hart

Sometimes, I re-read Catherine Fisher’s books to remind myself why I love to write so much, and what I want – ideally – to achieve in a story of my own. I will never be as good a writer as Catherine Fisher, mainly because her work is so psychologically complex and her characters so layered that I fear I’d lose myself if I tried to write in so deep a way, but she’s one of the writers I look to for guidance. Corbenic is my favourite of the books I’ve read by her.

The novel introduces us to Cal, who is a teenager on the run, emotionally and literally. As his story opens he is on a Chepstow-bound train, impatient to begin a new life with his uncle Trevor who has offered him a job in his accountancy firm. Cal dreams of a clean home, a quiet existence, a job in which he can be successful, neat clothes, a good car and above all stability – the sense that there is only one reality, and that he is living in it, and that things are under his control.

He’d planned this for years; he’d made the break. Life would be different. His uncle would meet him in some big, flash car. He wouldn’t have to see her [his mother] any more. He wouldn’t have to hide the knives and the bottles ever again. (page 3)

Cal’s mother lives with mental illness (which, as the book progresses, we learn may be part of something larger), and she is vacant, distracted, an abuser of alcohol, a self-harmer, and utterly incapable of living life in the modern world. She loves Cal with all her heart, but she cannot take care of him. He has been her carer from early childhood, trying hard to pretend to the outside world that everything is fine, getting himself to school and washing and ironing his own clothes, trying to keep his mother from drinking away what is left of herself and keeping her from attempting suicide – again. When we first meet him, he has reached his breaking point. His mother is devastated that he is leaving – for Cal’s father left when Cal was two, and he never came back – and so she fears her son will do the same.

On the train, Cal is confused and sleepy and in unfamiliar country. He mistakenly gets off at the wrong stop – a tiny, abandoned-looking, dimly lit platform which proclaims itself to be ‘Corbenic’, a place Cal has never heard of. He can’t find a railway map anywhere, or a timetable, or even a telephone box – and he is too poor to own a mobile phone. He has no idea where he is, or where to go.

So, he does the only thing he can, which is start walking up the narrow, dark path which leads away from the station.

He comes upon a moonlit lake, upon which are two men in a boat who speak strangely to him. Amid their odd words is the instruction to keep walking – that the Castle Hotel is not far. So, Cal keeps walking, and sure enough he comes upon the hotel, which is sumptuous and warm and where he is made welcome. He is assured that everything is free, and that he need have no worries about paying for his room and board, and he is placed as the guest of honour at a banquet in the large hall.

During the banquet, something happens to Cal. He sees what he feels is a ‘vision’, brought on perhaps by a drink spiked with alcohol – for Cal doesn’t drink, and he rules himself with a rigid hand, never allowing his perfect façade to slip for even one second, for fear he becomes his mother – and when Bron, one of the men in the boat, who owns the castle and is sitting beside Cal at dinner, asks Cal to describe what he sees, he refuses. He lies, because he is afraid.

And the King – Bron, the Fisher King, who bears a grievous wound – looks at Cal with such sorrow and betrayal in his eyes, and everything changes.

Cal wakes up in a different place the following morning, finding that Bron has left him his sword, along with a note saying the blade will serve Cal as Cal has served him. Cold, and hungry, and confused, Cal struggles on – but no matter how ordered and perfect his life looks, or how hard he wants to work at his uncle’s business, or how much he wants to succeed, another life is pulling at his mind all the time.

A world of swords, and bleeding lances, and a grail carried in the hands of a slender girl. A wounded king. A Waste Land. And Cal, at the centre of it all.

I love this book not only because it is, basically, a retelling of the Grail myth, encompassing Percival/Parsifal, Arthur, Merlin, Gawain (here called Hawk or Hawk of May), and other members of the Round Table who are aware, on some level, that they are ‘immortal’, but also because it exists as a story separately from these elements. I have a reasonable knowledge of the tales around which Fisher has constructed her book, but I don’t know everything, and it doesn’t impact upon my ability to enjoy this book. I do believe you can read and love this tale without ever having heard of the Fisher King, or the Waste Land, or the Grail, simply because Cal and his real story, his abuse and neglect and pain, is so compelling. His journey to escape his past brings him full-circle until he is forced to face up to it, and it is in this aspect that the book really draws the reader in. Part of me really doesn’t like Cal; he can be selfish, and pig-headed, and even cruel, but there are reasons behind everything he does. He is nuanced and complicated and so real that he lives with you as you read his story, so flesh and blood that you feel you can take his hand. That’s some achievement, for a writer.

If you’re looking for a book which will live in your mind, and which will bring you on an unparallelled emotional journey, and which has layers so deep you’re almost afraid to look, then this is a good one to try. It’s remarkable.

Underappreciated Stories

Sometimes, the flood of books surrounding us, as readers, can seem overwhelming. With the internet allowing anyone who wishes to self-publish, as well as the traditional publishing industry which, though under pressure, is still chugging away, and the sheer amount of books already published, in every language, it sometimes boggles my mind that so many books exist, and I will only ever read a tiny fraction of what’s out there.

Having said that, sometimes I look through my bookshelves (which are groaning, yes) and realise that even if for some reason books stopped being published tomorrow (what a nightmare!) I would have a collection of stories already amassed which would likely keep me entertained for the rest of my life. In preparing for this post I checked through some of my collection and found books I’d forgotten I owned, or ones I read so long ago that I could use a refresher, or ones which I love but which don’t seem to get talked about much anymore. Not every book can retain stellar status, of course: sometimes, really excellent books get published and for whatever reason fall beneath the flood. Hugely talented authors get ‘forgotten’, except among the people who love them.

This is a shame.

I adore Alan Garner, as anyone who knows me will be aware, but he’s an author whose (passionate, devoted) fanbase is small. I also love the work of Frances Hardinge, who – for some reason, unknown to me – is an author who is about one-fifth as well-known and widely read as she ought to be, but like Garner she attracts a passionate fanbase. It’s wonderful to have such a heartfelt following, but there are other authors whose work I love and who seem not to have the same sort of fanbase – so this post is for them.

Jenny Nimmo

The Snow Spider Trilogy, Egmont, 2005.
Image copyright: SJ O’Hart

Jenny Nimmo has been writing for young readers for years, and she is probably best known for her series about Charlie Bone, the Children of the Red King books. However, my favourite of her works is her magnificent Snow Spider Trilogy, which encompasses The Snow Spider, Emlyn’s Moon and The Chestnut Soldier, and which are masterworks of fantasy fiction. The stories introduce us to Gwyn Griffiths, a boy who is given five magical gifts on his ninth birthday, and who uses them to get to the bottom of the mystery of what happened to his sister Bethan, who disappeared when he was a younger child. Gwyn has magical lineage, being descended from the wizards of Welsh folklore, but his parents don’t hold any truck with nonsense like that – and so it’s up to Gwyn to prove to them that it’s the truth, as well as deal with newfound powers. I love these books for loads of reasons, Nimmo’s beautiful writing in the main but also their sensitive and delicate treatment of Welsh mythology and folklore (which, incidentally, is something she shares with another author, further down this list). Nimmo is still writing, and her work has been adapted for the stage, but for some reason she’s not talked about as much as I’d like. So, she’s top of my list of underappreciated masters. Check her out.

Kevin Crossley-Holland

So, yeah. I have loads of reasons to love Kevin Crossley-Holland’s work, namely because as well as being a wonderful children’s author he’s also an Anglo-Saxonist who has lectured and taught for many years – so, he covers all the bases, for me. Only the other day I remarked to someone how often it happens that people who write for children are also medievalists – Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Crossley-Holland – or have an interest in medieval folklore or mythology. Clearly, if you have the sort of mind which appreciates the myths of medieval Europe, you’re onto a winner when it comes to imaginative literature. In any case, I’ve read Crossley-Holland’s creative and non-fiction work, and I love it all, but his trilogy of books about Arthur (later expanded with a fourth book), The Seeing-Stone, At the Crossing-Places, and King of the Middle March (with Gatty’s Tale being the latter book) are simply wonderful. They look at the life of a medieval boy named Arthur – but not the Arthur – who is growing up, becoming a knight in the usual fashion, and who has a magical seeing-stone which shows him the life of the other Arthur, hundreds of years before. In the seeing-stone, a piece of obsidian, he watches scenes unfolding which seem to him to mirror the challenges and stresses he is facing, and which his namesake – the glorious and legendary king – also faced. I adore these books; they’re beautiful. So, check him out, too.

Catherine Webb

Catherine Webb published her first book at the age of fourteen, and it was spectacular. Entitled Mirror Dreams, it was about a fantasy world wherein dreams – good ones and bad ones alike – exist within the Kingdoms of the Void. When the Lords of Nightkeep kill the king of Dreams, and people all over the world begin to fall asleep and not wake up, it is up to Laenan Kite – an inhabitant of Dream – to save the day. I couldn’t believe this book was written by such a young author; Webb’s command of language, dialogue and characterisation (not to mention the sheer scope of her plotting) left me flabbergasted. I adore her books about Horatio Lyle, too, a detective in a version of Victorian London who gets into all manner of scrapes with his two teenage sidekicks and his faithful dog, Tate. Webb has a gift for snarky, humorous dialogue and excellent interplay between characters, and I don’t feel her books get enough attention. She is currently writing under another name, and has achieved great success with that, but check out her early work, too. It’s marvellous.

Catherine Fisher

I’ve mentioned Catherine Fisher on the blog before, I’m sure (and check out this Saturday’s book review, wherein she’ll be mentioned yet again!) but the reason for this is: she doesn’t get half the credit she deserves, in my opinion.

Red Fox (imprint of Random House Children’s Books), 2002, edition of ‘Corbenic’
Image credit: SJ O’Hart

Catherine Fisher has written some of the most imaginative and thrilling stories I’ve ever read, and again she has a certain medieval-archaeological-historical feel to her work, which underpins but in no way overwhelms it. As well as Corbenic, above (of which more on Saturday), she has written the beautiful Snow-Walker Trilogy, the amazing Darkhenge, about the forces which can be unleashed when people unwittingly disturb things they shouldn’t, and the masterwork Incarceron, about a sentient prison, as well as many more. She has, in short, written so much that even an uber-fan like me hasn’t read all of it, but I really think she’s a writer who isn’t read widely enough or appreciated deeply enough. Her way with words, her soft touches of folklore, her use of Welsh mythology, her beautiful dialogue, her compassionate handling of relationships and the psychology behind her characters is second to none.

So. There you have it. Some of my ‘hidden gems’, which I hope you’ll check out (Christmas is coming, after all!), and perhaps, in time, you’ll be the one passionately spreading the word about these authors, and their work.

Are there any writers who, in your opinion, are underappreciated? I’d love to hear about them! On second thought, my bookshelves are looking a bit thin…

Here we go again…

I start this morning with a heartfelt sigh. It’s not because the day outside is so dark it looks as if the sun has been switched off, or there is a high and wuthering wind tickling the eaves of my house, or because I’ve only barely got enough decaf left for one more cup, but because a friend shared this article with me.

If you’re not the ‘clicking on links’ type (and to be honest, I can hardly blame you), this is the title of the offending piece: ‘Children’s fiction is not great literature.’

Well, now. Let’s just think about that one for a minute.

Image: unrealitymag.com

My first issue with the piece is this: I have no time for articles about children’s literature and/or YA literature which rely on the work of J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer as their sole examples of the genre. This article mentions both these authors in its first paragraph, and doesn’t trouble itself to examine any other works of children’s fiction. Newsflash: there are far more books in the children’s lit. firmament than Harry Potter and Twilight. Honestly! To begin with, while I loathe the Twilight books with a passion, Meyer has also written a wonderful SF-themed, philosophical book titled ‘The Host’ which, despite being made into a movie, doesn’t seem to get enough credit – and which certainly isn’t mentioned in the article. ‘The Host’ deals with the idea of what makes a human being ‘human’, what it means to have a soul, how far one is willing to go for the people one loves, self-sacrifice, courage, and commitment. It is a book for teenagers which needs a large canvas; it examines everything an adult novel does, and more.

The author of the article does, to his credit, admit that some children’s books are better written, and more creatively structured, than adult books – this is undeniably true, though that’s not to say adult books are all bland, vanilla copies of one another. There are adult books which are intense flights of fantasy, or which are structured (‘Cloud Atlas’, anyone?) in wonderfully arresting ways. There are also a lot of bad, boring, irritatingly simplistic children’s books – I am not trying to deny that. However, when a children’s book is excellent, it really shines. I think the transformative power of a children’s book, the potential a good children’s book has to change a whole life, affect the reader’s entire way of thinking, is much stronger than an adult book. This numinous power is even felt by adult readers – I know I often find myself far more deeply moved by the emotional range and weight of children’s books than those written for adults. The issues in children’s books – loneliness, abandonment, powerlessness, love, bone-shattering hate, fear, adventure, injustice, bewilderment, identity, forging one’s place in the world – can be raw, and vital, and wounding, and just as relevant to an adult reader as to a child. Despite this, the author seems to take greatest issue with the ‘fact’ that children’s books just don’t tackle the same issues that adult books do, such as the grey areas of life, or the moral challenges of modernity, or the huge existential questions posed by writers like Joyce and Kafka.

In answer to that, I say: clearly, sir, you have not read very many children’s books.

Image: cafepress.com

For life’s grey areas, I direct you to the work of the current UK Children’s Laureate, Malorie Blackman, or the moral ambiguity at the heart of Cal, the central character in Catherine Fisher’s magnificent ‘Corbenic’, or the ideas around fatherhood in Gillian Cross’ novel ‘Wolf.’ Can you be a good person while doing bad things? These books will tell you that. So many children’s books deal with existential questions like ‘why am I here?’ ‘why was I born?’ ‘what happens when we die?’ – a few that spring to mind are Terry Pratchett’s ‘Tiffany Aching’ series, in which Tiffany’s deceased grandmother is as important a character as any of the living people in her world, and the timeless ‘The Little Prince,’ a book which teaches me something new every time I read it. Sally Nicholls’ amazing ‘All Fall Down,’ a book set during the time of the Black Death in England, is an unflinching look at mortality and loss and a powerful story about how it is possible to pick oneself up and carry on after suffering more than anyone should have to. It is aimed at young teenagers, but speaks to all ages. A recent children’s book which made no effort to shy away from the brutality of life was Sally Gardner’s ‘Maggot Moon’, a book which examines the horror of fascism and oppression and pulls no punches about doing it. If you want a story about political intrigue, ways to rule a kingdom, justice and injustice, how to distinguish between good and evil, and the terrible necessity – sometimes – to mask your true self in order to live in peace, then look no further than Kristin Cashore’s trilogy of ‘Graceling,’ ‘Fire’ and ‘Bitterblue,’ all aimed at the 12+ market.

One of the lines from the article which really irritated me was this: ‘Life is messy, life is surprising and, most of all, life is full of compromises.’ The article’s author means that only adult books are large enough to encompass themes like this, and that children’s books are reductive, black and white, and too simplistic to engage with wider themes like the chaotic nature of reality. But that’s exactly what children’s books are best at – dealing with a world which is frightening, unknowable, utterly surprising, sometimes a total and inexplicable mess, and where a child’s will often has to take second place to that of an adult. Mess, surprise and compromise are three of the central props of children’s literature. What could be more chaotic, or surprising, or fraught with compromise, than having your home life devastated, or war destroy your country, or being thrust into a new family with little or no warning, or having a parent fall ill, or being made homeless, or stateless, or being forced to face up to a changed reality: ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’? ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’? ‘Code Name Verity’? ‘The Silver Sword’? ‘I Am David’? ‘Elidor’? The ‘Chaos Walking’ trilogy? ‘A Monster Calls’? ‘Bog Child’? There are so many books about themes like this.

I could go on, but I’ve gone on long enough. Let me just finish by saying that I am the first to admit there are a lot of silly, overwritten, copycat books aimed at children and young adult readers – they are not all masterpieces of modern literature. As well as that, of course there are things children’s books (as distinct from YA books) won’t deal with, such as sexual relationships, or marriage, or anything in that realm, and that’s perfectly appropriate. However, if you’re willing to look for them, you’ll find children’s books – good ones – are just as profound, life-changing, meaningful, brave and beautiful as the best of literature written for adults; they pitch their ideas just as widely, and they deal with as full a range of human emotions, fears and needs.

And I won’t let anyone say otherwise.

Image: m.inmagine.com

 

Recommended Books: Vol. 2

‘Allo!

It’s been a morning of happy surprises for me so far. First among these is: we woke up with electricity this morning, which was a cause for delight. Last night – luckily just as Masterchef, my current obsession, was finishing – our power went. Cue house alarms going off all over the place, gentle candlelight appearing in windows all over our street, and stars popping out of the sky. It was, in some ways, rather lovely.

But all I could think of was: ‘How am I going to blog tomorrow morning sans electricity?’

As ever, my panic was unfounded. Power is restored, all is good with the world.

The other happy surprise is this: I have been published again! My short story ‘Skin’ appears in Issue 14 of the wonderful ‘wordlegs’ magazine – here’s a link – and I am very proud. It’s a proper short story this time, not a flash fiction piece. If you manage to have a read, please let me know what you think!

Hopefully, reading my story won’t leave you looking like this…
Image: goodmojopetcare.com

Alors! On with the blog.

I’m sure anyone who likes to read will have heard of Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke. These men were legends in the field of SF writing, and deservedly so. I want to recommend (pretty much) everything either of them wrote – I have a few reservations when it comes to Clarke – but today, I’d like to mention two books in particular. Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, and Childhood’s End by Clarke. Man in the High Castle is an amazing re-think of European and world history, assuming the Allies lost WW2, and Childhood’s End takes us through an invasion of Earth by an apparently benign alien force – but are they as good as they seem? Both books are amazing.

I also love Ernest Cline‘s book Ready Player One. Perhaps this is because I was a young person during the 1980s, because the book makes mention of the culture, movies, video games and fashions of that time, and couples them with a mind-blowingly amazing view of the future. It’s… just… I can’t… Look. Just read it, okay? Good.

I can’t believe I wrote Vol. 1 of this post without mentioning Sir Terry Pratchett. There is no author who has had a larger effect on my reading and writing life. I’ve been collecting his books since the age of 7, and even though I didn’t understand them at that age, I knew there was something worth sticking with. I was right. My favourite Discworld novel (and there are loads) is Lords and Ladies, though I have a feeling this might be because I no longer own my copy of this book. I ‘lent’ it to my doctoral supervisor, many years ago, telling him he’d enjoy it because of the echoes of a medieval story named Sir Orfeo which appear within it. Did I ever see it again? Did I what. The person concerned has since retired, and the last time I asked him for it back, he said something like: ‘No. I don’t want to give it back. Won’t you make me a present of it instead?’ He then proceeded to give me an eyelash-fluttering look, which melted me completely. So, anyway, he now has it. I hope he’s enjoying it.

I also recommend Sir Terry’s series of books for younger readers, known as the Tiffany Aching books, after their heroine. A-Ma-Zing.

Dave Eggers is an author some people have a problem with. I’m not sure why, because I think he’s fantastic. I read his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius many years ago, purely because the title made me laugh, but his You Shall Know Our Velocity! is also a brilliant piece of work. Also, read Zeitoun, a study of America in the days and weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

Everyone in the world needs to read A Little History of the World, by Sir Ernst Gombrich. I’ve lost count of the amount of people to whom I’ve recommended this book (in real life, I mean), and everyone, so far, has loved it and gone on to recommend it to others. Beautiful, poignant, educational (without even trying), and utterly wonderfully written, I cherish this book.

I have many collections of fairy tales. Unsurprising, you might think. But the most beautiful, and my favourite, is Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales, translated by Christopher Betts, illustrated by Gustave Doré, published by Oxford University Press. Sublime.

I also recommend The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, edited by the marvellous Angela Carter. Angela Carter is a bit like Jeanette Winterson, for me – I can’t pick one book to recommend over the others, because I love them all so very much. My top five would be, in no particular order: The Passion of New Eve, The Magic Toyshop, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Shadowdance, and the majestic collection of short stories known as The Bloody Chamber.

Also, everyone needs to read William Goldman‘s utterly bonkers and brilliant The Princess Bride. Particularly if you’ve seen the movie, and you didn’t know it was a book first. Get to it!

I love Douglas Coupland‘s books. Most people have heard of his big hitters, like Generation X, but my favourite of his books is actually The Gum Thief (JPod would be a close second) for its minute, and moving, dissection of modern life.

Catherine Fisher is one of the finest children’s authors ever. Full stop. I recommend anything and everything, but especially Corbenic and Darkhenge. When I grow up, I want to be Catherine Fisher.

If I can’t be Catherine Fisher when I grow up, then I’ll be Frances Hardinge instead. Is there a better wordsmith writing for children today? If there is, I haven’t read them yet. I’m currently reading Hardinge’s most recent book, A Face Like Glass, and there are times I literally have to put it down and go ‘Wow. Just… wow.’

Why not try Manda Scott‘s series of books about Boudicca, and Celtic-era Britain? Go on. They’re brilliant.

As y’all know, I used to be an academic. I wrote a thesis. It had a 40 page bibliography. I’ll let you do the maths with regard to how many books can fit into a bibliography that long, but let’s just say, it was loads. Two of the most interesting books on that list are Caroline Walker Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women and E. Roger Ekirch‘s At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime. If  you like stories about crazy medieval nuns and things that go bump in the night, you can’t go wrong with these.

And, after all that heavy stuff, try Jim Butcher‘s extremely fun series about a Chicago wizard, The Dresden Files.

Phew. I need a lie-down after all that. Have a lovely Thursday. Get reading!

Narrative Voice, and other stuff

This morning, dear readers, I’m a bit of a mess.  My head’s swirling, my thoughts won’t sit still and behave, and my poor brain feels like it’s trying to tapdance and balance plates on its head simultaneously.  So, before we begin, I beg your forgiveness.  There were so many things I was going to blog about this morning – I flicked through my memory-book from childhood in order to pick out some juicy reminiscences, and then I thought maybe I’d comment on some current events.  Then I discounted that in favour of yammering on yet again about how much I love books, or perhaps lamenting the fact that I need not only to replace my clapped-out mobile phone, but also my end-of-life (and much beloved) CD player.  Sigh.

(I might yet mention all these things – we’ll have to see how this thing pans out!)

For lack of any other point of beginning, though, let’s start today by talking about the book I stayed up late last night to finish – ‘The Obsidian Mirror’, by Catherine Fisher.  My poor tired husband had to put up with my reading light for far longer than he should have, and for that I thank him.  I really loved this book, but that’s no surprise to anyone who knows me, because Catherine Fisher’s work always meets a warm reception in my house.  This book is also somewhat connected with my blog from yesterday, where I wrote about feeling as though your cherished ideas are no longer ‘yours’ when you see something similar on a bookshelf; when I saw ‘The Obsidian Mirror’ my heart first leapt, then sank.  It leapt because I love few things in life more than collecting a new Catherine Fisher, and it sank because the book proclaimed itself to be about the theme which has been occupying my mind these past few years: time travel.  Well, my WiP isn’t about time travel, strictly, but there is a certain similarity of theme going on, and I had to read the book immediately to see if there was any point in my continuing with my own novel.

As it happened, the plot of ‘The Obsidian Mirror’ is brilliant, and nothing like my own work, which was a bit of a relief.  I won’t spoil anything for anyone who wants to read it (I recommend it highly), but I do want to talk about some of the things which I feel Catherine Fisher does very well, namely dialogue and narrative voice.  I’ve always enjoyed reading her interactions between characters, especially when they ‘speak’ in their Welsh accents, as they do in some of her books (not ‘Obsidian Mirror’, though).  One of the special beauties of her work is the fact that the reader can ‘hear’ things like accents and intonation, just from the way she writes.  Her dialogue is among the least flat and sterile I’ve ever read, and I know enough to realise that’s a talent she has honed through years of practice.  This skill is immensely useful near the end of the book, when we’re hopping from character to character and from storyline to storyline; it’s never unclear who is speaking, because Fisher is able to differentiate each character’s voice so perfectly.

‘The Obsidian Mirror’ is written in the third-person, but I’d hesitate to call it omniscient – the reader finds things out at the same time the characters do, more or less, but it’s not exactly limited strictly to their points of view, either.  We (the reader) get hints at the start of each chapter, when there are excerpts from diaries, letters or ballads to give us some idea what we’ll be facing.  My own WiP is written in the first-person (with one small exception, yet to be written, at the very end), and I’ve been thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of that choice since finishing Catherine Fisher’s book.  Of course, with first-person, you get the chance to really explore a character’s development and personality; you get the chance to allow your readers to love your character as much as you do.  But there’s so much you miss out on, too.  For instance, my protagonist is ignorant of a lot of very vital knowledge about her world and her family, and because of the way I’ve chosen to narrate her story, it’s difficult to write about her learning process without having other characters tell her things, or without having her overhear conversations, and that sort of thing.  There are things she needs to work out in order to survive, and I want to express her intelligence and resourcefulness, of course.  But because (through me) she’s narrating her own story, that doesn’t always come across – she’s not the type to blow her own trumpet, so the challenge is to hint at it through other characters’ reactions.  Things she might notice, or dispassionately comment on, are far more meaningful to a reader than they are to her.

This works, up to a point, but I know I’ve loads of room to improve.  The last thing a writer wants to do is have page after page of a character gently explaining to your protagonist things like, ‘Well, darling, you really should know that your mother was a flatulent swamp-monster made of broccoli – it’ll make certain aspects of your life now seem much clearer.’  Instead, you want to have your character feel a mysterious pull towards broccoli, which leads her to investigate further and uncover an arcane mythology about broccoli and swamp-monsters which bears some uncanny resemblances to her own life – we should see her put the story together herself, instead of being told what to do or think.  Or, if the story must have explanation, it should ideally be ‘off-camera’ – as in, a character learns something without the reader being privy to it.  Again, this is difficult when you’re writing in the first person.

How do you write, in terms of narrative voice?  Do you have a preference for first- over third-person, omniscient or limited?  I’m interested in how others find ways around the challenges posed by each type of voice.  My current WiP demanded a first-person limited narrative voice – I couldn’t have written it any other way, though I really do feel a third-person would have been easier.  If anyone has any narration tips, I’m all ears!  I’d love to know if there’s something I’m missing…