This year I read two ‘story within a story’ books: The Forty Rules of Love and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Now conceptually I love the idea. The meta-ness of a character reading and experiencing the story while we read about THEIR experience while reading the story ourselves gets to me.
In practice though, I found the ‘reader’ sections of both those stories to be pretty dull. Monique basically had no personality, while Ella’s section was very predictable and not as riveting.
Recently, I started reading A Tale for the Time Being and finally, the story within a story format is working for me. Ruth’s sections and her life are just as interesting as Nao’s, and she’s having meaningful reactions to the things that she’s reading about.
This brings me to my question: what do you guys think of ‘story within a story’ books? Do you also usually find the second narrator to be superfluous? Are there any books with this structure that you absolutely loved?
by barnabybuckles
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is brilliant. Lord Jim comes to mind, too, with its changes in narrative structure. I think it’s a great tool when used judiciously.