Lydia Davis’s The End of the Story made me question a lot of the things I think I know about story-telling and narration. There is almost no dialogue in this novel, very little description, and it takes place entirely in our unknown narrator’s head. In fact, it’s a story about writing a story, and I’m sad to admit that I rarely enjoy that type of novel because they often feel like exercises in ego.
This novel is anything but that.
Thoughts:
- In some ways this novel feels like Davis is sort of revealing some of the narrative tricks that novelists use, perhaps because as a short story writer she’s messing with a form that she’s not invested in…
- More likely, she’s carefully identifying the lens through which she both reads and writes, being transparent in a way that feels somewhat deliciously uncomfortable…
- This narrator thinks herself brutally honest…but she’s also not all that self-aware.
- It’s not like she’s an unreliable narrator, exactly, but we get clues as to why she’s not necessarily seeing the world as it is…
- And I think that she also *knows* that she’s missing cues she should be picking up on, and that knowledge drives her obsession (or is driven by it)…
- It’s not like she’s an unreliable narrator, exactly, but we get clues as to why she’s not necessarily seeing the world as it is…