What’s Terry Doyle Reading?
Lately I’ve been reading novels with first-person, unreliable narrators who are not very likable. This form really interests me because it’s something I’m trying to emulate. I’m interested in how a writer convinces the reader to stick with a narrator like this, one who we know is kinda shitty. Why does the reader care to keep turning pages? What is it that convinces them to stick with the narrator long enough for them to be redeemed (or not)?
Of course, the classic example is Lolita. But I crave something a little more contemporary, and a little more achievable.
Two examples that I’ve been reading and loving are God’s Country, by Percival Everett, and Treasure Island!!!, by Sara Levine.
God’s Country was the first novel I read by Percival Everett. I was tickled to learn how prolific he’s been, and devoured several others immediately. Then he published The Trees, which became a pretty big deal. And his novel Erasure was recently adapted into a film called American Fiction.
God’s Country is a western, narrated by a selfish, no-good degenerate named Kurt Marder who hires a black tracker to help him find his recently kidnapped wife. Through his treatment of Bubba the tracker we see how awful he is, yet he narrates as if his actions are justified. This dramatic irony is at the heart of why these types of stories interest me. In Kurt’s case, I think we as readers are waiting for him to get his comeuppance…
Sara Levine’s Treasure Island!!! is narrated by an incredibly self-centered woman in her early twenties who works at the Animal Library and uses Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic book as a guide for how she should live her life. What starts off as a story told by a witty, if narcissistic young women, soon turns into a voyeuristic spectacle as she verges toward sociopathy. Which, I gotta say, is hilarious. I think both of these books achieve similar feats in very different ways, but the commonality seems to be humour. I’ve re-read God’s Country more than once but I borrowed Treasure Island!!! from the library, so I’ve had a copy sitting in my online shopping cart, waiting for me. Both books did that thing I hope to discover every time I open a new book: they held me in thrall, and when I wasn’t reading them, I was eager to get back to it. Reading is so personal, and tastes are subjective, but I have been recommending both of these books every chance I get.
Terry Doyle is a writer from the Goulds, Newfoundland. His books, DIG, and The Wards were finalists for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the ReLit, The Alistair McLeod Short Fiction Award, The Winterset Award, The John and Margaret Savage First Book Award, The Margaret Duley Award, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction. Terry won the Percy Janes First Novel Award in 2017, and his fiction has appeared in Riddle Fence, The New Quarterly, untethered, and elsewhere.
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