Sarah Cole: A Type Of Love Story by Russell Banks, 1984
The magic trick:
A narrator who is distancing himself from his own story
This is a painful read, especially if you’re familiar with the kind of strange – but strangely relatable – relationship described here.
The narration in the story is remarkable. It’s a little bit showy. The narrator drops in throughout the text to comment on the way he’s telling the story. If you don’t like that kind of thing, you will almost assuredly dislike this story. But I happen to really enjoy that meta commentary, so this was a big winner for me. The narrator is uncomfortable with his role in the events of the story. He continually distances himself from the story, even referring to his own character as Ron. But it goes back and forth. Sometimes it’s “Ron;” other times it’s “I.” It all creates an extra layer of storytelling for the reader to reflect on.
And that’s quite a trick on Banks’s part.
The selection:
Here is the scene. You can put it in the present, even though it took place ten years ago, because nothing that matters to the story depends on when it took place, and you can put it in Concord, New Hampshire, even though that is indeed where it took place, because it doesn’t matter where it took place, so it might as well be Concord, New Hampshire, a place I happen to know well and can therefore describe with sufficient detail to make the story believable.
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