The Perils of First Person POV

I wish Wicked Cool Riley hadn’t gone on about Black Swan Green because after having read an excerpt (which leaves you hanging most aggravatingly!), I am now compelled to finish. Unfortunately, her copy (which was really the Loveseat’s copy) has now gone onto Massachusetts with her best friend and I have no money to spend on books. Which I ought because I’d like to support writers and bookstores and libraries (being as I hope to make my living that way too someday) but I, like the rest of the world it seems, am carefully parsing out my income for fear of lean times to come.

Lunch at 9 Kingfisher Meadows, Black Swan Green, Worcestershire, was Findus ham’n'cheese Crispy Pancakes, crinkle-cut oven chips, and sprouts. Sprouts taste of fresh puke but Mum said I had to eat five without making a song and dance about it, or there’d be no butterscotch Angel Delight for pudding. Mum says she won’t let the dining table be used as a venue for “adolescent discontent.” Before Christmas I asked what not liking the taste of sprouts has to do with “adolescent discontent.” Mum warned me to stop being a Clever Little Schoolboy. I should’ve shut up but I pointed out that Dad never makes her eat melon (which she hates) and Mum never makes Dad eat garlic (which he hates). She went ape and sent me to my room. When Dad got back I got a lecture about arrogance.

Riley and I spoke about the opening of the novel (which the above quote is not) which wasn’t immediately compelling for me. By the time I got to the protagonist talking explaining about Moron and Dawn Madden and schoolyard fun, I was in love with the voice. Therein lies the peril of first person POV, for this particular reader anyhow. I have a bit of a knee jerk aversion to first person, not because I’ve been burned in the past, but because the conceit bothers me. To whom is the person telling the story? If not to a specific person, then why are you telling me this story in the first place? Why should I care about you? This isn’t to say I won’t read first person novels, but that particular point-of-view needs to work much, much harder to earn my interest and if you don’t immediately grab me from the get go, then I am less inclined to finish your story. First person is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest of POVs to execute successfully, hence why I either love them or hate them.

I suppose for this reason I am more willing to accept the diary or epistolary format: the conceit is built in. I am relating the tale to myself for a future audience or to another person. I especially love the epistolary novel, which sadly fell out of vogue some time in the mid-19th century (if it ever was popular, that is). In any other instance of first person, I am always initially skeptical. The foremost question is, of course, why should I care?

Somehow it’s easier to overlook in the case of 3rd person close and for me, especially in free indirect discourse and omniscient narrators. I really am a child of 19th century literature; I love intruding narrators, head-hopping, and the like, unfortunately, most of which are now decried as “weak writing.” Why, why is that weak? I have no hard and fast rule as what is “good writing” and what is “bad writing”; I only know that whatever notions I have of it are constantly broken and overtaken by exceptions.

As a general rule, I like commercial fiction. Sort of. I like a strong moving plot and I would rather read something with a Plot than something with a Story. But if you pressed me to name a commercial fiction novel that I’ve read and loved, I can’t. Because I don’t love them and I certainly don’t reread them. I cracktastically reread books, but not anything commercial. Unless you count most of my YA novels, but I lump them into a different genre altogether although they are, perhaps, the most commercial of all genres.

Which brings me to literary fiction. Most literary works I adore are a bit more on the commercial side, like Haruki Murakami’s books or Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen (surreal fantasy, gothic romance, and “chick lit” respectively). And I adore literary works and will compulsively reread them again and again. But there are other literary works that bore the living daylights out of me and that I wouldn’t touch with a six-foot pole. I know that what makes a good book literary isn’t necessarily plot or lack thereof, but voice. And that is infinitely hard to pinpoint.

Trying to keep this in mind during revisions is difficult. I have Plot. But I want the voice to be compelling too and that, I feel, is something people have or don’t.