Monday, November 17, 2014

'Rabbit Hole' narrator

Sorry for taking so long on this. You've probably forgotten the book by this point, so this is more to get something on the record. I found it interesting, maybe not so much as others who raved about it, though. I was mainly interested in checking out the child narrator, after having read our last YA pick written from a teen's point of view and having discussed the issues of an adult writing for teens in a teen voice and how realistic that really is. This is an adult writing in a child's voice for an adult audience, which generally seems more plausible to me, maybe because the writer and reader at least are on the same maturity level. It's one adult communicating with another, even if the medium (or subject matter) is a kid. The book won a lot of praise for its realistic boy narrator. Would you agree with that assessment? Or is this enterprise of creating a sustained narrative in a little child's voice really asking too much of a reader's suspension of disbelief? Is it manipulative somehow? It seemed to me that the narrator mostly sounded like a precocious child might actually sound but that the narrative choices —— including this detail but not that detail, etc. —— were inescapably adult. I think adults can recognize the charm of children's speech and perspective but I'm not sure they can convincingly replicate it over the long haul. Still, I appreciated the glimpse into how the drug-lord underworld might appear to a kid who didn't know anything different.

1 comment:

Erin said...

I found the subject matter pretty fascinating. What a fantastic idea to show that crazy lifestyle through a child's eyes. It was captivating and at times heartbreaking.

I enjoyed the narrator, and I think the author captured the charm of children's speech, as you say. But I agree that some of his observations seemed distinctly adult. I think it was smart to make the story as short as it was. Clearly he could have turned it into a novel, showed us the rise and fall of this kingpin, but I doubt the child narrator could be sustained over something longer.