Fictional First-Sight Fever by Elizabeth Emerald Artwork by seshadri_sreenivasan at FanArtReview.com |
It is rightly said that one doesn't have a prayer for publication unless the book hooks the reader from the get-go. I am an exception to the rule: once I start reading, I generally follow through, even when I think the book sucks. (My reward for slogging through: relishing kindred one-star reviews.) I recently finished a complex and compelling novel, The Weight of Water, by Anita Shreve. After the acknowledgements there's a sneak preview of her next book, All He Ever Wanted. On the last sentence of page four, Shreve flouts (by proxy) "show-don't-tell"; the narrator states (to the reader) that he is inexplicably, and irrevocably, drawn to a woman he spies in a throng. To be fair, prior to his declaration of instant, and undying So yes, in the sense of meticulous and magnificent imagery, there is a glut of show preceding the tell. Regardless, though I don't fault the fine writer (quite the reverse), I want to shake some sense into the insipid narrator. Whether rendered in fiction or purported in fact, I find at-first-sitis to be an unbearably irritating condition. Though, mercifully, at least as regards myself, not in the least contagious.
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Elizabeth Emerald
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