Quote:
|
What do you think of the narrative technique? I thought who, when and where were important factors. It alternated between Martin and Lucy who were married (therefore on the same "team") and both unreliable. Would it have worked better with a single narrator or even multiple narrators including Ben and Serena?
|
It's interesting you saw Martin and Lucy as more 'on the same team'. For most of the book I saw them as mild antagonists since Martin was in a marriage of convenience, not love, and viewed Lucy almost as something like a glorified lackey (of course echoing Ben and Martin). By the end they had bonded more by the revelations of the night of the party though... despite it leading to their separation lol.
I liked the four-pronged narrative technique of Martin's past, Martin being interviewed, the night of the party, and Lucy's journal. It definitely gave the story a lot of layers and worked for me. I also liked the revelation at the end that Martin had written it all (I suppose using the journal of Lucy he'd somehow got?) and was still obsessed with Ben but now obsessed with revenge.
I mentioned before how it was rather unbelievable that neither in school nor at work the possibility of Martin being gay wasn't ever outright mentioned; however, in retrospect it worked because if Martin were writing it all, he might leave in the allusion to people thinking he might be different/gay but not let anyone in the recollections of his past actually say it per his own sensibilities. This ties into the unreliability of the narrative.
A single narrator wouldn't have worked as good in my opinion. I'm not sure how multiple narrators would've played out. Ben was well rounded but though he's good looking and charismatic, I'm not sure his internal dialogue would be as interesting as Martin or Lucy's. Serena was a somewhat flatter character and as is I think her narration would be boring unless her character were rounded out. I feel like I get what their side of the story would be- Martin is obsessed with Ben but because of what happened they'd been bound so far to play nice with him and his wife.