‘You Are Now Entering The Human Heart’ by Janet Frame

You Are Now Entering The Human Heart by Janet Frame, 1969

The magic trick:

First-person narrator who really is only an observer of the story’s action

We have a first-person narrator in today’s story, set in downtown Philadelphia. We learn very little about that narrator, to whom almost nothing happens directly. The narrator is our surrogate, and that’s about it. It gives us enough intimacy to feel we are there, but enough distance to get what feels like an impartial report.

And that’s quite a trick on Frame’s part.

The selection:

In two years or so, she’d retire and be in that apartment by herself and no doorman, and everyone knew what happened then, and how she’d be afraid to answer the door and to walk after dark and carry her pocketbook in the street. There was enough to think about without learning to handle and love the snakes, harmless and otherwise, by having them draped around her neck for everyone, including the children – most of all the children – to witness the outbreak of her fear.

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