Hey folks, happy almost spring. At least here in the Northern Hemisphere. Though, if you’re currently living in a storm-torn section of the globe, I wish you patience. Bad weather is always an excuse for more reading/writing time, yes?
This wet, cold late winter has pushed my nose further into my books. As you can see my TBR bedside pile has grown! (Inverse relationship to bedside Kleenex, thanks to the longest running upper respiratory plague of my adult life. But I’m finally better now, so bring on the tequila.)
In betwixt sneezing episodes, I found myself immersed in the delightfully rule-breaking leaps and shifts in some of these books. In particular the Shipstead and the Garmus in the area of POV/head-hopping/omniscient intrusion swoops.
As some of you know, I regularly teach this POV class for LitReactor (next one begins May 16). And I always begin with a cautionary lecture on head-hopping. In general, I’m not a fan. But in the hands of a master wordsmith, my prejudice against popping around perspectives within a scene might need a rethink.
Let’s look at Lessons in Chemistry, for instance. The novel opens with a timestamped scene that takes place mid-arc, so already the chronology is tangled, and the main character, Elizabeth Zott, is introduced via an old-fashioned omniscient narrator (think, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” Dickensian type opening).
But this chapter one (really, a functional prologue) is short, and serves to locate the reader in a historical era that sets up the theme of the book, namely, the early sixties when women were expected to stay home and raise children. The novel soon plunges the reader into a meet-cute taking place ten years earlier, opening the narrative to the aforementioned swoops and hops.
We mostly follow the perspective of Elizabeth, but Garmus offers context and backstory by sliding into other characters’ heads. Sometimes, she separates POV hops with white space, but even this rule is broken nearly immediately, as this page 11 excerpt demonstrates: