One positive thing has happened during this first frightful pandemic month of 2021. I find myself able to read again. I mean, really read. Focus on pages, stick with a novel from chapter to chapter, finish it. Have the last ten months transformed reading from a great delight to a near impossibility? If so, I hope that you, too, are finding your way past this frustrating roadblock.
My booklist this month has spanned adult and teen novels as well as revisiting some of my favorite craft-of-writing texts. There are lessons to take from every title, but today I’ll focus on two works of fiction.
Both THE LAST HOUSE GUEST by Megan Miranda (S&S, 2019) and GIRL, UNFRAMED by Deb Caletti (Simon Pulse, 2020) are “look-back” novels. Structurally, both stories involve revisiting past events in order to make some kind of peace with an essentially present-day outcome.
Look-Back Novels and Memory
THE LAST HOUSE GUEST shifts, via alternating chapters, between the summers of 2017 and 2018, finally resolving in a capstone “summer 2019” chapter. Each time the narrator shifts between 2017 and 2018, the events and characters she discusses are cast in new lights. GIRL, UNFRAMED recounts the timeline of past events leading up to the reveal of a singular catastrophe that we realized the main character has been processing throughout. The structural frame in this case places court document titles below each chapter number to sequence events and, in a certain sense, points-of-view
At the core of the look-back structures of HOUSE GUEST and UNFRAMED is, of course, memory. In both instances, protagonists’ unreliable memories – perhaps intentionally buried, perhaps clouded by stresses of various moments – must be processed or faced to reach the story’s solution/conclusion. For authors, looking deeply at modes of grappling with memories is a valuable tool in building gripping, relatable (not necessarily likeable) characters.
In Toni Morrison’s introduction to her prizewinning 1987 novel, BELOVED, she writes…
“I hoped…that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive.”
Whether it’s a past crime, trauma, or tragedy, isn’t every human mind in some way engaged in a duel between remembering and forgetting? It is worth considering the look-back element of story as a structural feature of a novel, or as a way to understand your character.
Character Building With Memories
Here are a few questions to consider. Note how looking at memory questions lends itself to potential look-back narrative structures and point-of-view options.
- Does my character need memory for their “day job”? A detective might struggle to solve a crime if they cannot remember something a witness said or did. A waitperson who can remember the regular customers or favorite orders might enjoy big tips.
- Is my character handicapped or driven by a memory? An opera singer becomes an accountant after the trauma of forgetting lyrics on opening night. A collegian majors in child psychology after enduring an abusive childhood. A car dealer goes mute after falling asleep at the wheel and paralyzing another driver.
- Do I want my main character to have unreliable memories? Is the narrative of their memory something the reader should take as truth? What about other characters? What pivotal event might various characters remember or interpret differently?
- What plot devices can be used to deliver misinformation (that must later be corrected) to a character? Are there settings in which the eyes and ears can deceive the mind?
- At what point is the “wrong” version of the narrative introduced to the reader and how? Do I want the reader to believe the wrong narrative and be surprised with the protagonist when the truth is revealed? Or do I want the reader to understand the protagonist’s error and wait/worry/follow said character down the resulting dangerous path?
- What is the line between an unreliable memory and a lie?
Is Hindsight 20/20?
Both GIRL, UNFRAMED and THE LAST HOUSE GUEST grapple with themes beyond memory. Deb Caletti artfully explores the powers and dangers of female beauty. Megan Miranda delves into the complex caste society of resort towns and the definition of friendship. Both stories test the limits of parental and family loyalty. But it is only as the two novels’ protagonists, Sydney and Avery, look backward in time that they are able to see with clarity how their looks, their homes, and their relationships, drove them to moments of no return.
Can you recommend any good “look-back” novels to add to my tbr list? Have you ever tried this storytelling technique? How are you managing to look back on the (indescribable?) year that was 2020?
