Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Festival Shenanigans

On page 160, when Jake "explain[s] to them that [he] would be back," I felt some doubt in the accuracy of the statement. Those guys were not in a state to be listening to anybody's explanations.

From that, I concur with my original assessment of his narration style. He is subjective and far from omniscient, although later in the novel--I had to start reading ahead--there were moments when he seemed to know more than he could have. I'll get to that later.

It's as good a time as any to say that Jake is the main protagonist of the story. If there's any hero, it's him. His hubris would have to be his tendency to let Brett do as she pleases. She claims she loves him, and he claims to love her, and he lets her use him repeatedly, and it's terrible.

Now, I want to talk about Brett. Even though I'll probably complain later about how ridiculously fickle she is, I like that she defies the gender stereotype for her time. She refers to her friends as "gents" and "chaps," and she doesn't swoon at the sight of goring bulls (and there was a lot of that in this chapter).

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