Books

I'm reading The Darling by Russel Banks, which I started as a break from Sophie's Choice by William Styron. The interesting thing is that both books have the same problem for me: they're each written from an entirely interior point of view. They're almost 100% exposition or explanation, which means that a huge amount of both books is telling not showing. Hannah Musgrave drags out this long-wined description of her journey from America to Africa and back again, and tells us what she was thinking at the time, and why certain thigns were meaningful and what they mean. And yet he keeps the story itneresting by constantly teasing us with unanswered questions that the narrator, Hannah, reminds us of as she postpones revealing their answers. The fact of Hannah's relative self-consciousness as a narrator of a story makes us wonder how reliable her explanations are. It's not really the classic Turn of the Screw situation where you're not sure if the narrator is crazy, lying or confused, or if you missed something.
On the other hand, Sophie's Choice has a similar self-consciousness but lacks the same self-awareness. Stingo constantly mocks his younger self, and shows ironic embarrassment at the self-centered waftiness of his younger self.