Pronoun confusion

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm reading a book that's getting a lot of industry plaudits at the moment. I won't name it, and will change the character names, but the writer is someone I've tried to read before and gave up for stylistic reasons (basically I couldn't follow what was going on, where.) But this section here was totally confusing me(and there is three pages of this scene, all of which I got similarly confused within) and I was wondering:

a. if it's just me

and

b. if not, in this sort of circumstance, how do we make it clearer?



"Man, you should try Cheerios. But you blocking traffic. Make some room for the people, you know?" He (pov character) gently guides him out of the way of a kid on rollerblades barreling down on them. His man stares after him.

"Dreads on a white boy," he agrees, or he thinks he does. "You can't do it. How's about that one?" He pretends to nudge him with his elbow, not making actual contact, to indicate the girl with tits that God himself must have sent down from on hight, banging up against each other under her tank top. But the guy barely looks at her.




I could not follow who was doing which action. And, fifty pages in, it's having me go arrrgh a lot. But am I, then, too listy with adverbs? Is this okay?

 

[Culhwch]

That section is definitely confusing, but with such a small snippet out of context it's hard to say whether I'd follow it better had I read more (and got used to the style). But no doubt this sort of confusion should be avoided.

How to do that? Use names, titles, descriptors - all the old standards - and then just work it and work it until it flows and sounds natural, I guess.

 

[Gordian Knot]

I could follow what is going on, but it took me several read throughs to get the gist. If I had to do that every paragraph I would give up on the book too. I don't care how many plaudits it is getting.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If the rest of the book is like that, I would probably give up after a few pages.

Is it getting plaudits because of the style, or because of something else?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It's getting plaudits for both the writing and the story and is one of the everyone is reading it fantasy novels at the moment. I would be surprised if it didn't pick up awards given the buzz around it.

Much of the writing in it is very good, and it is very voicey, but this sort of passage is relatively common and there are other writing things which are setting my teeth on edge - whole voicey sections in close third with no 'I thoughts' followed by sections in the same voice full of them. Much of it reads as editorial to me ie should have been picked up on at some stage.

Anyway, I'm 68 pages in so will keep going for now but I'm glad it isn't just me!

 

[allmywires]

I don't understand any of it. (In my defence it's early..) I'd put it down never to be seen again.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Boringly, I agree with everyone else. It's difficult to follow.

 

[prizzley]

It's getting plaudits for both the writing and the story and is one of the everyone is reading it fantasy novels at the moment. I would be surprised if it didn't pick up awards given the buzz around it.

Is there an element of the king's new clothes here? None of critics favouring it care to admit they were lost!

 

[HareBrain]

Name it! Name it!

Is there an element of the king's new clothes here?

Note that it's in -- ooh, gasp! -- third person present tense! But soon we'll all get jaded with that, too, and then only a novel in second-person-future will be racy enough to get the critics' pulses racing.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Name it! Name it!



Note that it's in -- ooh, gasp! -- third person present tense! But soon we'll all get jaded with that, too, and then only a novel in second-person-future will be racy enough to get the critics' pulses racing.

Yes, it took a little bit of getting used to, that. I'm still not entirely convinced of it. Having said that, there are bits in the book I really like, but I am struggling at times.

Prizzley, I don't think so, this is an established writer whose last two books were a commercial success - the fact I bought this in hb at Tescos for a £5 probably says it all about their level of success. I think it's a personal taste thing - and they have written ya in the past, which maybe accounts for the present tense. I'm frustrated more than anything, because I want to be absorbed and keep having to come out and figure things out that I shouldn't need to..

 

[Jake Reynolds]

I have to say, I'd be interested to see how a critique of this would go on chrons.

Not my preferred style of material at all. Hard to follow, and a little crass. But that's just preference.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Prizzley, I don't think so, this is an established writer whose last two books were a commercial success - the fact I bought this in hb at Tescos for a £5 probably says it all about their level of success. I think it's a personal taste thing - and they have written ya in the past, which maybe accounts for the present tense.

I'm afraid that even having written fantastic books in the past does not guarantee that the writer did a good job with this one, or, sadly, even that the writer had anything at all to do with the writing of it. I have read (and thrown across the room and eventually donated to the library) books by a very well-known, excellent writer that I can promise you did not even READ his latest book, much less WRITE it. It was absolutely not his style, not his level, and it saddened me that he would put his name on it. Admittedly, his name was on it along with someone else's, but the someone else was clearly the one who wrote it.

In your case, it may have been some dreadful experiment, or perhaps this is what his writing looks like without a great editor and he didn't have one this time, or he may indeed have just put his name on something for whatever reason. If I had to read more than a couple of paragraphs of what you posted here, I would throw it across the room and leave it in the dust. Forget the library. Why inflict it on someone else?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I dunno, it's currently getting 4.23 out of 5 stars on Good Reads, and people are absolutely raving about it.

I thought about this and should I name it and then thought yes, because she is a writer I know others love and I don't think it's fair if she's sort of passed off because of one passage I selected as confusing. (although, admittedly, I could have chosen others.)

It's the Shining Girls by Lauren Buerke and the concept is that of a time-travelling serial killer, whose one victim to survive tries to track him down. And it's sparked a lot of discussion - Glitch's thread on the internet was sparked by it.

I've really enjoyed some bits of it - some of the description is nice, some of the scenes memorable, and it's definitely got a voice. It's just things like the bit highlighted that let it down for me, and I suppose I was a bit surprised that that sort of thing wasn't picked up by an editor, and started to wonder was it a stylistic thing.

 

[Glitch]

I guessed it was shining girls, as you said in the other thread you were going to read it.

 

[allmywires]

I just read the Guardian review of it and I am a bit troubled that it says, "For an extra kick he enjoys masturbating over the scenes of his crimes, decades before or after he commits them" only a paragraph before noting, "Beukes has enormous fun with the concept." Not sure I call that fun, Mr Grauniad.

I do like the idea of the 'House' though, it's a concept that's lingered long in my mind. (and ssshhh might be making itself into my secret santa short).

The thing that irritates me about this kind of stylistically different fiction is that I can write like that, I love writing like that, but then people say it's too hard to follow so I don't know what to do.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'll have to check it out. For what it's worth, lots of books get raved about and make their authors millionaires and they are pure garbage from a technical standpoint. Too many people don't know the difference anymore.

 

[Glitch]

The except quoted isn't a smooth read. It rather sounds like it's been translated into English from another language.

 

[Mouse]

I thought I understood the passage but reading that nobody else did, makes me think that I didn't after all.

 

[MistingWolf]

It's confusing. I agree. And to me it sounds like the author is trying to use a very bad Hawaiian accent....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If the book really is wonderful -- or if the publisher thought it was wonderful -- with such a distinctive voice, an editor really wouldn't know how to edit it without spoiling it, and might have had to settle for leaving it as is. Or ... the editor and the publisher might think that it is perfect down to the last word.

Once high literary merit is established in people's eyes, a certain degree of impenetrability can count in its favor, rather than against it. It can be hard sometimes, to tell the difference between a book that is challenging and a book that needs editing. Of course a book could be both.