Ever wonder what makes a book a bonafide page-turner? God knows I have. I pick up a book for a bit of pleasure reading and all of the sudden I’m in the story, oblivious to deadlines, ringing phones, and my overloaded washer’s current attempt to escape. Nothing else matters beyond What Happens Next and I’m useless until I finish the story. How did this happen? How was my attention captured so completely? Instead of reading the book, it felt more like I was living the story. Did the writer cast a spell over me? No, but it’s likely the writer used a technique called “Deep P.O.V.” P. O. V. is the story’s point of view, the perspective of the narrator. That can be the unseen, omniscient third person narrator (like God is telling the story); first person narration (e.g. “Call me Ishmael”) or, if the author is very good and ambitious, second person narrator (second person is very in-your-face and tricky to sustain unless the writer is incredibly skilled like Margaret Atwood, Jay McInerney, or Robert Penn Warren). The voice of the narrator telling the story acts as a buffer between the reader and characters so the less you can hear of the narrator’s voice,…
When you’re an English Major, you have to deal with Jane Austen. She’s one of the writers whose work you have to know before you graduate, like the medical students have to pass A&P. This can be a problem because readers love or they hate her books with a passion. There’s no middle ground. Granted, Mark Twain said an ideal library contains none of her stories but his heroes create their own destinies by ignoring the rules of their cultures. Miss Austen’s characters don’t have that luxury. They have to carve solutions to their problems out of a narrower field. Nevertheless, constraints don’t defeat Austen heroines, they enhance them. Difficulties turn Jane’s women into jewels. Pressure abounds in Pride and Prejudice. The Bennet daughters are all old enough to marry but there’s an unspoken demand that at least one of the girls marry a man with money. Mr. Bennet has no savings and his death would leave any dependent family homeless. The two older sisters know this although both would rather marry for love than a fortune. They also live in a world that runs on gossip and rumor and it’s hard to find the truth. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Bennet withstands…