A third of the way through Siri Hustvedt's new novel, The Sorrows of an American, I began to lose heart. Despite its winning mixture of shady secrets, compulsive behaviours and mazy Brooklyn brownstones, something just didn't feel right about it. In a scene on page 97, it became clear why. The narrator, Erik Davidsen, has asked Miranda out on a date. When she turns up his reaction is jarring: "I felt choked with admiration". Not desire, not nerves, but admiration. It's a comment no man - in life or literature - would ever make about a woman he sexually desires.
This is only one example of a series of false notes Hustvedt strikes in the portrayal of her male narrator. Collectively it undermines Erik's voice. No longer believable, neither as man or a character, his lack of credibility ultimately fails the story he's been employed to tell. But the issue here, at least as far as I'm concerned, is not about the problems of writing from the perspective of a member of the opposite sex - though they are legion - but the difficulties of writing well in the first person at all.
Being inside the mind of a character is a thrilling reading experience - and one of the novel's great advantages. But this intimacy comes at a price. The "I" must be compelling at all times. Too many sentences beginning with "I", too many internal monologues and too much introspection - all common characteristics of bad narrators - can kill a reader's interest in ten pages. Similarly, it's easy to succumb to didacticism - it's very hard to "show not tell" when you know a character can tell you everything they see and feel.
Avoid these, and the many other pitfalls, and the first person narrator can offer something both powerful and transformative. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga's bitingly sharp novel of modern India, started life as third person novel, but was slowly taken over by the compelling voice of killer and entrepreneur, Balram. Without the voice, I suspect the book's moral and political undertones would have become more explicit and rather less interesting. The immediacy of the voice is enough to make you think about how such a scenario came about, without recourse to pages of exposition. By the end of the book, we feel we know both Balram and his India intimately.
There is a similar subtlety in Rebecca Miller's use of narrator in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. The opening and closing thirds of the book are written in flat, elegant prose, while the middle section, Pippa's younger years, are given a first-person Technicolor sheen. It's as if we're allowed into her life, and are then shut out - an effect that in the context of the novel is both poignant and powerful.
Great first-person narratives suck you into a character's world to such a degree that it seems effortless. The reality, of course, is that it's incredibly challenging. How, for example, can you describe your narrator without recourse to looking in a mirror? It's an incredibly complex art - and that's before you begin to imagine what it's like to be a member of the opposite sex ...
