meganbmoore | (no subject)

The worst of the weather seems to have passed without doing any major damage, at least close tome.

Meanwhile, I'm afraid I must give upon the recent, superpopular zombie apocalypse YA book. Though well written, it's first person present tense. That can work in shorter works, but in longer works,my generous opinion is that it tends to make voice and characterization rather flat, and result in a "narration by numbers" feeling. When I'm reading it, though, my feelings tend to be closer to "IT'S LIKE NAILS ON CHALKBOARD I FEEL LIKE THE AUTHOR THINKS I'M FIVE I CAN'T RETAIN ANYTHING PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!"

Then there's the religious zealots and the evil nun interfering with True Love and the Other Girl demanding that Our Heroine be totally miserable with her so that a guy won't have his feelings hurt. And really, I could get past that in a book that wasn't written in a tense that drives me batty, but...

That said, Carrie Ryan does seem to be a pretty good writer, and the storyis interesting. And while Mary, the main character, is pretty decent, Imight be totally mad for the book ifit weren't in present tense, and especially if it were about the Other Other Girl.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Curious, why do you think it produces a flat, by the numbers feeling? I dislike present tense narration as well, but I have never really truly figured out why.

By necessity, it almost always ends up telling, not showing. "Mary does this. Mary thinks this. Mary wants this." etc.

I'm not sure if it is necessity, though? Just because of the tense, it doesn't seem as though it would really be necessary to do it that way any more than with a first person narrator in the past tense. (although in a way, isn't it more natural for a first person narrator to tell rather than show?)

I still feel like that book was overhyped and received more buzz in the blogosphere than it deserved.

What i read wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as it could have been, and not only for first person present tense.