Hello everyone. What a weird experience this is. Have never done this before, so I?m sorry if it doesn?t really look as though I know what I?m doing. Anyway, thanks to the people who voted for my book, and thanks to the people who read it even when it wasn?t their choice. I had a look at some of the earlier posts and wrote a couple of answers already. So here ? Valerie Singleton style ? is one I made earlier:
By lalaa on Mon 30-Jun-08 16:32:32
I found I liked Rosamund less and less as the book progressed. I found her to be very self-orientated and I began to feel quite angry with her. There were points in the narrative after Thea's return to her mother where I was thinking why would Rosamund want to tell Imogen this apart from to make herself feel better? My question to Jonathan is, did you intend to make the reader feel this way? (Or was it just me?!)
OK: Since it was published I've found that readers of the novel divide into two groups: those who like Rosamond, and those who don't. Personally, I'm in the first of these groups, but that doesn't make either of them 'right'. Certainly her motives are ambiguous. She says that she wants Imogen to know the truth, but, as you say, she is also telling this story in order to make herself feel better. My own view is that, at the end of her life, after the disappointments she's had, she's entitled to do that. Also I think there is ambiguity about whether she really expects Imogen to hear the tapes, and therefore who she is talking to - to Imogen, or to herself? So her position is unclear, and the status of the narrative is unclear. What I didn't want, though, was for her to be a straightforward "unreliable narrator", whose version of events has to be decoded or seen through. Sometimes she is reliable, sometimes she isn't.