I'd like to read a couple of books where parallel narrative is used to good effect and would welcome recommendations.

I've not yet read it but by all accounts The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin would fit the bill.

Most certainly TMOL, where parallel narrative is very skilfully done (you can pay me later, Emma

JB

Aargh don't won't to be rude but I don't enjoy historical fiction! Any other thoughts welcome.

Hmmm, Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland had a parallel narrative and wasn't a bad read.

JB

What I would call true parallel narrative - where the stories don't touch and have no characters or plot in common - is surprisingly rare. Probably because it's an absolute bugger to get right. I routinely clutch my head and shriek 'Why do I do these things?'

Not much help here, I fear, as in the nature of things most of the ones I can think of are historical. Would Margaret Attwood's The Blind Assasin make your toes curl too badly? Or Possession which is mainly not historical, though the thing they investigate is?

(Mind you, if you're over 30, half of TMOL isn't historical at all... )

Emma

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Sammy and JB, your cheques are in the post... ;)

So Emma in that case would it be poss to extract one of your narratives and read it on its own with a reasonable amount of satisfaction? Be interested to know.

I guess one thing that troubles me about parallel narrative is either in its pure form or not I feel it can kind of depend a lot for its reader interest on the head-scratching human desire to solve a puzzle, to try and work out connections, and sometimes little else. Is the use of parallel or dual narrative ever just a way of avoiding the demands of sustaining a single narrative?

Yes, it would, though since there's a set of letters written in the early strand and read (without being printed out again in full) in the later strand, you might be a bit puzzled by some of the references. In fact TMOL was originally written without the letters being read in the later bit - all the connections were thematic and linguistic - though there were lots of them - apart from the fact that the two stories take place in the same house. So the two narratives stand pretty well on their own, but it's all so, so much richer if you take them together.

I keep finding myself writing parallel narratives because I can get two different angles on the same problem. It's not easier - if anything, it's more difficult, because it's less obvious how to structure it, and structure is all if you're going to keep your reader with you as you alternate. If I wrote things set now, that would just mean controlling and developing my subplots properly, but I always want to write about history, as well as about a historical period, and about how much or little our experience is historically contingent. The only way really of exploring that is to explore it in two different times at once...

You could certainly make a crossword puzzle out of this stuff, but I don't think head-scratching is people's chief reaction to TMOL, though one or two said they found it took the first chapter to get into it the alternations of the narrative. I set out to write a story that people wanted to read, cared about the characters and what happened to them - a proper page-turner - and the ideas and themes are just there to chew on if you want to. If you don't, you still (I hope) enjoy the book.

Emma

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Is the use of parallel or dual narrative ever just a way of avoiding the demands of sustaining a single narrative?

Well it could be, but instead you have the demands of linking the two, which is just as demanding, perhaps more so. And in TMOL's case, the two strands are 70,000 or so words each, so each one's the length of a shortish novel, and have fully-developed subplots of their own, so there really isn't anything missing, if you want to think of it like that.

Right. I think it's off to Amazon for me. Thanks Emma for that full reply. I liked the extract I saw from TMOL in the Crowd thread -great atmosphere and 'depth' somehow, in so few words

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I do wonder about history, whether we learn from it or not, and I must say I'm inclined to believe not, in the long term. Short term yes, fascism brought us a liberal consensus in Europe for sixty years, but you can feel it slipping these past few years... In the end every generation brings forth its monsters of ego and ambition and I suppose that's why historical fiction leaves me cold, it seeems like matters of 'now' are more important.

Well, if you look at history you get a better idea of what's inherent in human nature, and what's historically or culturally contingent, which does (or should) affect how you handle whichever monster is the current problem - and I don't just mean George Bush Jnr. And I would argue that if you write fiction about it, you can worm your way into psyches into a way that it's very, very hard to do honestly in non-fiction.

But bugger it, I'm not in the business of changing the world, that's beyond me: I'm just a storyteller, trying to do my bit in shaping the randomness of real life into a consoling order. Glad you liked the extract, btw. It's the Peterloo Massacre, while we're on the subject of world-changing events...

Emma

Storyteller. That's an interesting term. I've been thinking about what the word writer means, and wonder if it isn't a bit misleading in the context of fiction; storyteller is so much better because it describes the real skill. There are a lot of people who can write, ie who are good with words, can give good sentence or even paragraph or even chapter but not so many who really deeply understand what it takes to tell a story. That's a way deeper and more mystical skill I feel. The 'writing' bit seems to me to be a smallish part, and it's probably true that even bad writing can be carried by good storytelling (tho preferably not!). If everyone started calling themelves storytellers (aspiring or accomplished) on this site rather than writers then I wonder if there might actually occur a whole change in the way some people operate (myself included). ie forget the writing, get the story down!

Z

I think Atonement (Ian McEwan) has parallel narrative...am I right? and of course, Wuthering Heights.... but that is historical, I supose, what's the definition of that? something written now but set in the past, or something written before a certain date?

Thanks Anna

It's tricky, more about genre feel than setting I guess. Atonement isn't historical fiction and nor is Birdsong. I don't suppose Wuthering Heights is either is it? Just because it was written in the past?

it's probably true that even bad writing can be carried by good storytelling

When people are snotty about highly successful commercial fiction, I think this is what they can't see - though I think I'd phrase'bad writing' as 'not-good writing': in one sense it's good if it's doing the job of conveying the story well enough to carry it. As far as I'm concerned, in fiction storytelling is the sine qua non, and any other merits the text has - wonderful writing, profound ideas, jokes - is a bonus, and must be subordinate to the necessity of telling a story which people want to keep reading.

Emma

Zooter, I'm interested: why aren't Atonement and Birdsong historical?

Can't resist pointing out that those are the two titles Headline are using to promote TMOL...

Anna, the Historical Novel Society's definition is something set 50 years before it's written. For the purposes of exploring the question, I'd extend that to include any time which is before the author was born.

Emma