144 Sentences With "first person narration"

Through forthright first-person narration, Clemmons offers evocative vignettes on growth and belonging.

With the book's first-person narration mostly discarded, Theo lacks almost any interiority.

It is Briseis' voice, in a first-person narration, that largely carries Barker's interstitial chronicle.

The class emails that intersect her first-person narration are bracingly sarcastic and often inventively intimidating.

And it's jarring when Rachel and Samuel switch briefly from first-person narration to addressing each other.

Without the book's obsessive first-person narration, it's hard to see the ocean beneath their impenetrable expressions.

Maybe Kim Tribbeck, a prickly stand-up comedian whose first-person narration forms parts of the novel.

The first-person narration is so constricted as to choke out any possibility for reflection, irony or insight.

Hoang infused Stella's first person narration, which vacillates between earnestness, anxiety, and tremendous excitement, with her very personal perspective.

When you read her spare, observant first-person narration aloud, Lucy's way of seeing the world snaps into focus.

Helen Hoang, who has Asperger's Syndrome herself, infuses Stella's first-person narration with the reality of being a neurodiverse individual.

It mixes and reinvents inherited forms, blithely shifts from third-person to first-person narration, reproduces dreams and dramatic monologues.

VanderMeer uses the characters — specifically the biologist and her first-person narration — to satisfy his thematic points about Area X's nature.

The plot was suspenseful but what I liked best was the sardonic first-person narration by its hero, First Officer John Carter.

Despite the first-person narration lifted from Endo's epistolary novel, Rodrigues is never as nuanced a character as he is on the page.

When you're dealing with the close quarters demanded by first-person narration, it's inevitable that you won't warm to all your interlocutors equally.

"The Girls" draws much power from this style, aided by the immediacy of its first-person narration; but development and argument tend to leak away.

Whatever the author's particular spin, the characters' voices, especially in first-person narration, create an imagined past for the reader, and need to sing in tune.

We don't get to see her as a human being with any depth until the book shifts into Alice's first-person narration, deep in its second half.

Lek tells Creators that he is particularly interested in video games' first-person narration, and what the implications of a first person perspective mean in terms of narrative.

But the shifts between first-person narration, film transcripts and letters addressed to her mother cause the book to buckle somewhat under the weight of its own confusions.

This first-person narration of a woman, Jay, in search of her mother is told by five girls who hand off the tale at random points in the story.

In part, that's because it's also the first book she's written in the first person, giving Smith a chance to play with the solipsistic, limited perspective of first-person narration.

Cleves's first-person narration is charmingly breezy, and while history has pretty much spoiled the whodunnit here, Capin maintains a thriller-like pacing all the way through to the end.

Courtney's first-person narration of the opening section sets the novel's tone, foregrounding his concerns as a young black man being raised by a widowed mother in a mostly conservative Southern town.

But this account of female survival in the face of vengeful conquest by an unrestrained army is essential to an understanding of war, and the book is a tour de force of first-person narration.

Sunny's story is also a welcome change from the doling out of Kit's history with Cal and from present-day Kit, who has tunneled so far into herself she's gone from first-person narration to third.

Stephen, naturally, has no access to or investment in this circle, so chapters of his first-person narration alternate with third-person present-tense chapters that are set, confusingly, a year or so before the investigation.

With its near-telegraphic flashbacks and forwards, and first-person narration by an unnamed journalist writing in 1990s present day, Didion's novel creates the impression of a slow-motion, backward-running film of a land-mine explosion.

Having the opportunity to freely interpret a relationship as complex as Elio and Oliver's as an outside, third-person viewer, rather than through the novel's first-person narration, only adds to the depth of Call Me By Your Name.

The book is written from her perspective, but Sigourney's ability to read minds means we frequently shift from her first-person narration to third and back again, as she slips in and out of the heads of those around her.

By eschewing such phrases as "he thought" or "she wondered," free indirect discourse submerges readers directly into a speaker's mind, and establishes a beautiful middle ground between the cold impersonality of third-person narration and the feverish proximity of first-person narration.

Everything about this podcast is completely different from every other horror show out there: the trippy edits that intersperse sound cues to imply the passing of time, the first-person narration directly to a reader, the vivid descriptions of violence and gore.

Ms. Wolitzer's metafictional conceit may lose something without Joan's first-person narration (though perhaps there was a metacinematic correlative — given the focus on how spouses rely on each other, it's notable the director, Bjorn Runge, is married to his editor, Lena Runge).

Mr. Auburn tries to correct for this by breaking the book's first-person narration into shards and assigning it to various characters as if to suggest that Augie isn't so much a person as a collective identity: America of a certain bootstrap scalawag vintage.

The authors — Emmich is an actor and novelist ("The Reminders"), and Levenson, Pasek and Paul are the team behind the musical — use a first-person narration that inserts readers directly into the psyche of Evan, who struggles to decide how best to handle the escalating misunderstanding caused by his letter.

As an executive producer on "Sharp Objects," she helped bring Mr. Vallée on board, and the two worked closely to tackle what was perhaps their biggest challenge: How to convincingly surface the rich interior drama of the novel's first-person narration while also hooking viewers on the central murder mystery?

Rather than include Yu Dafu's best-known short story, "Sinking" (a melodramatic first-person narration by a Chinese student in Japan in the early 1920s that blurs an individual's sexual inferiority complex into a collective sense of national humiliation), Huang chooses a movingly low-key essay about Yu's struggles as a penniless writer in Shanghai.

First person narration is more difficult to achieve in film; however, voice- over narration can create the same structure. An example of first person narration in film would be the narration given by the character Greg Heffley in the popular film adaptation of the equally popular book series Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

The telling of a story in the grammatical first person, i.e. from the perspective of "I." An example would be Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, which begins with "Call me Ishmael.""First Person Narration", Purdue University College of Liberal Arts First-person narration often includes an embedded listener or reader, who serves as the audience for the tale.

An Acquaintance with Darkness is a historical fiction novel by Ann Rinaldi. It is part of the Great Episodes series. It is told in first-person narration.

The third first-person narration from Alhambra follows, which is much the same as the second. We then have “The End”, which takes us to the Smart home once they return from holiday.

18 Nov. 2005. The Literary Dictionary Company. 22 April 2007. This change in narrative style from the first-person narration of Kay herself is one first seen in the previous work in the series, Blow Fly.

Inexcusable is a 2005 novel written by Chris Lynch in the young adult genre. Through first-person narration, it chronicles the life of high school senior Keir Sarafian. A sequel, Irreversible, was published on September 6, 2016.

It is in first- person narration, though with each new page a different narrator is used forming a series of monologues by different characters affected by the same series of actions. The book is split into five acts.

McCarthy ignores literary conventions – for example, he does not use quotation marks – and switches between several styles of writing such as matter-of-fact descriptions, almost poetic prose, and colloquial first- person narration (with the speaker remaining unidentified).

Unlike Jane Eyre, which is written in the first person and narrated by the title character, Shirley is narrated by an omniscient but unnamed third-person narrator. For her third novel Villette, Brontë returned to first-person narration.

A Ride into Morning is a historical novel by Ann Rinaldi about the legend surrounding Tempe Wick, one of America's most famous heroines. It is part of the Great Episodes series. It is told in first-person narration.

Ellen Nerenberg from Wesleyan University argues that the author uses the first-person narration and a childlike style to emphasize the protagonist's innocence. Nerenberg contends that a main theme of the novel is the solidarity of youth, exemplified by the bond that forms between the protagonist and the kidnapped child. Additionally, she argues that another theme of I'm Not Scared is the individual's departure from family and societal norms, as evidenced in Michele's resistance to the violence and negativity of his environment and his father. Giuliana Adamo from Trinity College Dublin discusses the use of the first-person narration as a tool to convey the huge confusion and overwhelm felt by the young boy protagonist.

The duality expressed in the change of narrative voices in the successive chapters is overcome by a first-person narration by somebody who is neither "The Architect" nor Hawksmoor.for the conclusions in this paragraph see: Susana Onega: "Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd", Camden House 1999, p. 55f.

The poem relies on a first-person narration style similar to "Ode to Psyche".Bate 1963 p. 527 It begins with a classical scene from an urn in a similar manner to "Ode on a Grecian Urn", but the scene in "Indolence" is allegorical. The opening describes three figures that operate as three fates:Bloom 1971 p.

Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style.Neale (2000), pp.

Doyle's story is another example of this genre of invasion literature. Ironically, its conclusion foretold the fate of the Cunard liner Lusitania two years later. Doyle uses a particular stylistic technique to evoke emotion in British readers, making them more receptive to the writer's warnings: the first person narration by the victorious enemy commander, full of gloating and condescension towards the "stupid" Britons.

The novel begins with Keir arguing with Gigi about the events which occurred the night before. It continues with Keir's first-person narration of his senior year in high school. Keir is crushed when he learns that Gigi has accused him of date rape. He goes on to tell Gigi that he loves her, and would never do such a thing.

Vance retired as an employee from the law partnership Bracewell & Giuliani. In 2010 the book Boomtown DA, written by Vance, was published by Whitecaps Media. The book, using first person narration, begins with the Elmer Wayne Henley prosecution and roughly chronologically goes through Vance's terms from 1966 to 1979. Mary Flood of the Houston Chronicle stated "it appears a comfortable and engaging read".

Hillard (Hilly) Wise gives the novel first-person narration. Wise Men is broken into three sections: 1947–52, during Hilly's adolescence; 1972; and the present. Hilly grows up in New Haven, Connecticut, where the Wises are Jewish in a non- Gentile community. Arthur Wise, Hilly's father, is an ambulance chaser who becomes very wealthy from class-action lawsuits involving airplane crashes.

Voice actor Maurice LaMarche provided the first-person narration, drawn from Hesburgh's writings and interviews. Creadon said that the filmmakers were worried that the film would not be popular outside of a Notre Dame audience, but they were encouraged by a sold-out Washington, D.C., premiere at the 2018 AFI Docs. The film was released on April 26, 2019, in Chicago and South Bend, Indiana.

Hastings, pp. 384–86 He also began writing a novel in a new style, using first-person narration,Sykes, pp. 273–76 but abandoned work on it when he was commissioned into the Royal Marines in December and entered training at Chatham naval base.Hastings, pp. 391–92 He never completed the novel: fragments were eventually published as Work Suspended and Other Stories (1943).Stannard, Vol. I pp.

In the Hour of Chaos is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Bayer Mack about the life and trials of the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. ("Daddy King"), father of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The film's ensemble voice cast uses first-person narration sourced from autobiographies and biographies about Daddy King, family attorney Murray M. Silver and other King relatives and associates.

Les Misérables is a seven-part radio series broadcast July 23 – September 3, 1937 (Fridays at 10 p.m. ET), on the Mutual Network. Orson Welles adapted Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, directed the series, and starred as Jean Valjean. The 22-year-old Welles developed the idea of telling stories with first-person narration on the series, which was his first job as a writer-director for radio.

The sixties was not only the decade of modernist film but the starting era of distinctive directorial filmmaking. This can also be observed in Hungary. After his debut films, Így jöttem and Szegénylegények were the first movies where Miklós Jancsó's trademark visual style – long, slow cuts and horizontal camera movement – appear. István Szabó directs his most personal movies during this time, pairing subjectivity with first-person narration.

The golden age of first-person narration was during the 1940s. Film noir typically used male voice-over narration but there are a few rare female voice-overs. In radio, voice-overs are an integral part of the creation of the radio program. The voice-over artist might be used to remind listeners of the station name or as characters to enhance or develop show content.

The narrator, Bartleby's employer, provides a first-person narration of his experiences working with Bartleby. He portrays himself as a generous man, although there are instances in the text that question his reliability. His kindness may be derived from his curiosity and fascination for Bartleby. Moreover, once Bartleby's work ethic begins to decline, the narrator still allows his employment to continue, perhaps out of a desire to avoid confrontation.

Ultimately, the emblem DGD carriers wear signifies a population oppressed not only by their own genetic mutation, but also by the rest of society.Bast, Florian. "I Hugged Myself": First-Person Narration as an Agential Act in Octavia Butler's "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", in Black Intersectionalities: A Critique for the 21st Century. Published in print: 2014 Published Online: May 2014 Society thinks people with DGD can be problematic.

Above all, the biggest change is the severe limitation of people's rights, especially those of women, who are not allowed to read, write, own property, or handle money. Most significantly, women are deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. The story is told in first- person narration by a woman named Offred. In this era of environmental pollution and radiation, she is one of few fertile women remaining.

All the events take place in Tuxtla, Chiapas or in and around Mexico City. Also, while the narrative stays in third person omniscient, Silko plays more loosely with the point of view characters, at times just moving through various characters' consciousness within scenes or over spans of time. There is even a jarring small first person narration in the opening pages. Menardo - is an indigenous Mexican from Chiapas.

Like Felipe Ibarro's letter, "I Want You Women up North to Know" uses a first person narration to address women consumers in the northern United States. In the poem, Olsen describes four female garment workers who are each referenced in Ibarro's letter: Catalina Rodriguez, Maria Vasquez, Catalina Torres, and Ambrosa Espinoza. In both the poem and the letter, each woman's wages, work, and challenging living situation is described.

The novella has been well received by critics because of the author's ability to blur the lines between reality and imagination. Ulf Zimmerman complimented Kehlmann for demonstrating how to get his readers "to believe pretty much anything." and referenced the novel to have inspiration from Stephen King's The Shining. The Brooklyn Rail called the novel "a masterful experiment about the limits of literary realism." and credited Kehlmann's use of unreliable first-person narration.

Bawandar is based on the true story of Bhanwari Devi's gang-rape case. The names of characters and places have been changed for legal reasons. For example, Bhanwari's character is called Sanwari, her husband Mohan's character is called Sohan, and their village is called Dhabri (Bhateri in real life). The story is introduced through first-person narration by a foreign reporter called Amy (Laila Rouass), who has read about Sanwari's case in a newspaper.

The first person narration supplied by Dennis Sommers has been compared to that of Dr. John Watson, the narrator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. The character of Matthew Livingston is only seen through the eyes of Dennis Sommers. The comical description of Matthew has been compared to the way Archie Goodwin narrates the Nero Wolfe mysteries. The Matthew Livingston series was initially described as an "updated version of the Hardy Boys" by many critics.

Alongside her in their investigations are the surly lieutenant Alan Webb and the friendly sergeant "Big" Ben Irving, as well as his friend and private investigator Leo Baxter. Characteristic of the series is the extensive use of Julia's diary, where the protagonist writes her thoughts and impressions about the cases, working as a first-person narration. In some albums, the storytelling is done by other characters in the series (like Myrna Harrod or sergeant Irving).

Mama Day's section is preceded by three diamonds. In her narration she often speaks about what is taking place at present or events from her past. 1st person narration – Cocoa's and George's first person narration, which is displayed as a conversation to one another about events that have occurred, is the other narrative voice. It switches between the two characters without any evidence other than a brief space between the two sections.

The first person narration reveals a juvenile voice with a passive role in the action and a lack of motivation in solving mysteries. In book #12 The Sign in the Smoke Nancy does not solve the mystery, a secondary character comes up with the solution. In several books Nancy stumbles upon the solution to the "mystery" and acts amazed at the reveal. This is in contrast to the set-up of previous Nancy Drew series.

Arthur Hughes (circa 1860) Aurora Leigh (1856) is an epic novel/poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem is written in blank verse and encompasses nine books (the woman's number, the number of the Sibylline Books). It is a first person narration, from the point of view of Aurora; its other heroine, Marian Erle, is an abused self-taught child of itinerant parents. The poem is set in Florence, Malvern, London and Paris.

Hutton had a strong creative hand in the A&E; series, serving as an executive producer and directing four telefilms. A Nero Wolfe Mystery adapted the plots and dialogue of the Stout originals closely; unlike previous Wolfe adaptations, the series retained Archie Goodwin's first-person narration and did not update the stories to contemporary times. The episodes were colorful period pieces, set primarily in the 1940s–1950s. The production values were exceptional and critics responded favorably.

The first person narration in the novels belongs to Dennis Sommers, age 16, aspiring journalist at Serling High School. Dennis is self described as the "low man on the totem pole" as a writer for the school newspaper. Dennis is described as insecure, slightly overweight, and an admitted coward. His skills include all facets of computers and the programming of them and a deep interest in writing, he admits to keeping journals of his adventures with Matthew Livingston.

The Goldfinch is told in retrospective first-person narration by Theodore "Theo" Decker. As a thirteen-year-old boy, Theo's life is turned upside down when he and his mother visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see an exhibition of Dutch masterpieces, including a favorite painting of hers, Carel Fabritius's The Goldfinch. There, he becomes intrigued by a red-headed girl with an elderly man. A bomb explodes in the museum, killing his mother and several other visitors.

27 Jan. 2014. Robert Crossley notes how Butler's intense first-person narration deliberately echoes the ex-slave memoirs, thereby giving the story "a degree of authenticity and seriousness." Lisa Yaszek sees Dana's visceral first-hand account as a deliberate criticism of earlier commercialized depictions of slavery, such as the book and film Gone with the Wind, produced largely by whites, and even the television miniseries Roots, based on a book by African-American writer Alex Haley.

This change in narrative style from the first-person narration of Kay herself is one first seen in Blow Fly. This device not only allows for more characters and their perspectives to come to the fore, but also marks a significant transformation in the way that the novels represent the criminal. Whereas previously the criminal's mind was never made available to the reader—thus intensifying their "otherness"—the later novels allow space to explore their point of view and uncover their motivations.

First-person narratives can appear in several forms; interior monologue, as in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground; dramatic monologue, also in Albert Camus' The Fall; or explicitly, as Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Other forms include temporary first-person narration as a story within a story, wherein a narrator or character observing the telling of a story by another is reproduced in full, temporarily and without interruption shifting narration to the speaker. The first-person narrator can also be the focal character.

" Romantic times bookclub wrote that Evernight was a "Teenage love, ancient hatred and a Romeo and Juliet-style feud fuel the fires in this compelling first-person drama." Booklist wrote that Evernight was something that "Stephenie Meyer fans will find similar rewards in the flashes of humor; the terrifying battle between ancient, supernatural societies; and the steamy romance in which love bites aren’t just a euphemism." Kirkus Reviews was critical of the book commenting "The problem is Bianca’s first-person narration.

He has experienced the pull of Bolshevik idealism and has fallen in love with Trotsky's secretary, Evgenia. On the other hand he is appalled by the brutality of some revolutionaries and considers helping his friend Robert Lockhart of the British Embassy. He finally decides that he has no business interfering with the destiny of Russia, one way or the other, and leaves Moscow for Stockholm. The final part, "A Fairy Tale, Ending", focuses on Ransome's private life, shifting into first person narration.

Biography, Berlin International Literature Festival 2010 His best-known work is his 2008 novel, Hamam Balkanija, for which he won the International Literature Prize Balkanika. Its chapters alternate between two timelines, both of which use characters based on real people. The contemporary timeline is a collection of vignettes in autobiographical first person narration told from Bajac's point of view. In the original edition it was printed in the Cyrillic script, and people such as Alberto Manguel and Allen Ginsberg appear alongside the author.

In the rebooted strip, the first-person narration has been abandoned and the art style has changed. The original kid is now an adult, and his son has become the strip's protagonist. The location of the strip is also never mentioned; the presence of snow in the winter, and various cultural traits, imply that it is somewhere in the northern United States. It is possible that it is the creator's home state of Rhode Island, but this is never made explicit.

Nancy Drew, Girl Detective replaced the long-running Nancy Drew mysteries series. This new series is written in first person narration, from Nancy's point of view, and features updated and overhauled versions of the main Nancy Drew characters. In addition, new secondary characters are introduced to populate River Heights and appear over multiple books, adding a framework to Nancy's world. The drastic changes in the main characters' personalities, and a perception in quality decline, earned the series negative reviews from long-time fans.

Postmodernism often entails a response to the theory that the truths of the world will be discovered through science. Postmodernists contend that truth is subjective, rather than objective, as it is biased towards each individual's beliefs and outlook on the world. They often use unreliable, first-person narration, and narrative fragmentation. One critic has argued that Vonnegut's most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, features a metafictional, Janus-headed outlook as it seeks both to represent actual historical events while problematizing the very notion of doing exactly that.

Despite the initial appearance of an action film, Blade Runner operates on an unusually rich number of dramatic levels. As with much of the cyberpunk genre, it owes a large debt to film noir, containing and exploring such conventions as the femme fatale, a Chandleresque first-person narration in the Theatrical Version, the questionable moral outlook of the hero—extended here to include even the literal humanity of the hero, as well as the usual dark and shadowy cinematography. Eye reflecting the "Hades" landscape.

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" also established many tropes that would become common elements in mystery fiction: the eccentric but brilliant detective, the bumbling constabulary, the first-person narration by a close personal friend. Poe also portrays the police in an unsympathetic manner as a sort of foil to the detective. Poe also initiates the storytelling device where the detective announces his solution and then explains the reasoning leading up to it. It is also the first locked room mystery in detective fiction.

Truman Capote later adopted the genre. He argued that the non-fiction novel should be devoid of first-person narration and, ideally, free of any mention of the novelist. He was immediately intrigued after reading the story of the Clutter murders in The New York Times, and used the events surrounding the crime as a basis for In Cold Blood (1965). He spent years tracking the story, spent considerable time with the people involved, watched hours of film footage, listened to recordings, and read transcripts and notes.

In a foreword written in 1979 for the Virago edition of the novel, Atwood described it as a protofeminist rather than feminist work. Atwood explores gender stereotypes through characters who strictly adhere to them (such as Peter or Lucy) and those who defy their constraints (such as Ainsley or Duncan). The narrative point of view shifts from first to third person, accentuating Marian's slow detachment from reality. At the conclusion, first person narration returns, consistent with the character's willingness to take control of her life again.

After the 1975 edition, the project was unchanged for about 20 years. During the mid-1990s, publisher Simon & Schuster, which owns the Joy of Cooking's copyrights, hired influential cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, formerly of William Morrow, and editor of works by Jeff Smith and others. Guarnaschelli, supervised by Rombauer's grandson Ethan Becker, managed the creation of the edition of 1997, published by Simon & Schuster's Charles Scribner's Sons division. The new edition kept the concise style of its predecessors, but it eliminated the conversational first-person narration.

This makes some situations feel less impactful and also makes John seem less likable, although he remains a fascinating protagonist nonetheless." Publishers Weekly applauded the "top-notch writing and well- structured suspense elements" present in the novel. Craig Clark for Booklist also praised the prose, and added: "John's first-person narration is at once deeply disturbing and darkly humorous." A Salt Lake Magazine reviewer wrote: "Wells’ fast-paced writing style works well with the plot, which doesn’t lag at any point in the novel.

In December 2012, Old Time Radio distributor Radio Archives published Nightbeat: Night Stories, an ebook anthology of six new Nightbeat stories.Nightbeat: Night Stories ebook Authors included were Howard Hopkins, Paul Bishop, Will Murray, Tommy Hancock (who also served as editor), Mark Squirek, and Bobby Nash. Each story used the traditional radio opening and closing, as well as Stone's first-person narration. Several characters from the radio series appear, and Hancock's entry – "Lucky" – attempts to explain who "Lucky" Stone from the original pilot really is.

This is the first of Jeff Lindsay's "Dexter" series not narrated exclusively in the first-person point of view. Along with Dexter's first-person narration, the novel includes third person narration from two other points of view. One is a person called the Watcher, a member of the cult that follows and observes Dexter. The other is a mythical, godlike entity called "IT" (revealed to be Moloch) which has existed since the beginning of time and is similar in various ways to the Dark Passenger.

St Louis Post Dispatch. In Blow Fly, we see a change in narrative style from the first-person narration of Kay herself to a third-person, omniscient, narrator. This device not only allows for more characters and their perspectives to come to the fore, but also marks a significant transformation in the way that the novels represent the criminal. Where previously the criminal's mind was never made available to the reader—thus intensifying their "otherness"—the later novels allow space to explore their point of view and uncover their motivations.

The main plot of Checkers is told in flash back, first- person narration which takes the form of a diary. The author of this diary is a nameless teenage girl, who is a voluntary patient in a Psychiatric Ward. She refuses to talk about why she's there and does not say a word during her Group therapy sessions. Before she admits herself into hospital, she lived with a grimly dysfunctional and uncommunicative family of four, whose father was a co-owner of a company named Rider Group which receives a multimillion-dollar business contract.

Almost every review comments on the most distinctive stylistic feature: the anonymous narrator who provides continuous commentary. The narrator has an "acrobatic ability" that guides the reader through the contradictions of the war and American identity. The first person narration derives from the frame context for the book: a confession by the narrator to communist captors trying to make him account for his exile. The communist captors force him to write and rewrite the narrative, in an attempt to correct his ideological lens on America and the South Vietnamese enemies.

The novel tells, in first-person narration, the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (who is recently deceased, and whom Stevens describes in increasing detail in flashbacks). The novel begins in 1956, with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton, describing her married life, which Stevens believes hints at an unhappy marriage. Furthermore, Darlington Hall is short-staffed and could greatly use a skilled housekeeper like Miss Kenton. Stevens starts to consider paying Miss Kenton a visit.

This series, that began in 2013, is a reboot of the Nancy Drew: Girl Detective series. The series continues to follow Nancy and her friends' cases, with first-person narration by Nancy. The series was created to move away from the trilogy format of Girl Detective (besides for the first two books, all titles are now individual mysteries), make books longer than its predecessor, and have a cover artist. The new series also attempted to fix some of the more criticized aspects of Girl Detective, with arguable success.

In turning the Dostoevsky story into a film, Visconti eliminated the first-person narration and made Natalia less of an innocent, and at times something of a hysteric and a tease. For his part, Mario rejects obvious offers of romantic attention from other women in the story, holding on to a fruitless obsession. Mario thanks the young woman for the moment of happiness she has brought him. However, he is left alone at the end of the film, befriending the same stray dog he met at the beginning.

Schmidt stated "I have always made fun of authors who say they had to write a sequel because there were characters they couldn’t get out of their heads, but now I have to take back all those truly horrible things I said." The novel was initially drafted from a third-person perspective, and Schmidt struggled with telling the story, but after switching to a first-person narration, Schmidt wrote on "my third start on this stupid novel, it was Doug telling the story and it was right." Like Doug, Schmidt was underestimated by his teachers until one taught him to read.

Europa is a stream of consciousness novel by Tim Parks, first published in 1997. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in that year, losing out to Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. Jerry Marlow is a neurotic obsessive whose first-person narration describes a coach trip he and several colleagues take to Strasbourg in order to petition the European Parliament for improved working conditions for foreign university teachers working in Italy. While observing the idiosyncrasies of his colleagues, Marlow constantly revisits personal anxieties about relationships with his ex-lover, his wife, and his daughter.

Schischyphusch oder Der Kellner meines Onkels - like so many of Borchert's short stories which deal with childhood-related topics and which introduce family members, such as Die Kirschen or Der Stiftzahn - is written in first-person narration. He mostly uses a simple past tense. His narrative style is reminiscent of an anecdote and creates the impression of a real occurrence. Short, sojourning passages, after which the narrator has to return to the main plot by using formulations like 'so' or 'as I have mentioned before' help add to this impression, and recreate the feeling of the story being told orally.

A narrative twist in the final pages upends the reader's expectations. Parallels in the cast of characters, first-person narration, and some plot elements have led Guard Your Daughters to be frequently compared to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, published five years earlier. Although hailed by John Betjeman as a fine first book whose excellence lay "beneath its flashing surface," it has more recently been described as a "good children's book" version of Smith's novel. It has also been compared to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a book that is specifically referenced within the text of Guard Your Daughters.

Hang a Thousand trees with Ribbons is a 1996 historical novel by Ann Rinaldi. The story, told in first-person narration, follows the life of Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American poet. The story recounts her capture by black slavers in Africa and the horrors of the Middle Passage as experienced by a woman of intelligence and artistic ability when society assumed Africans were not endowed with either. Ann Rinaldi's vivid portrayal of the first African American poet is set against the backdrop of the American War of Independence, so there is a double theme of search for liberty in the novel.

The introduction and sections throughout the book are written in this voice as the different stories of Bascombe Wade, Sapphira Wade, and what exactly "18 and 23" is. An example of this communal voice is in this sentence from the introduction that states, "And he coulda listened to them the way you been listening to us right now." Rita Mae Brown states that "The different voices are beautifully realized but confusing to read." As well as the communal voice, Mama Day offers both a first-person narration and occasionally a free indirect discourse that gives readers direct access to Mama Day's thoughts.

Upon publication, the series was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews. Critics praised the series for its insightful look at a wide range of issues and suspense filled narrative. The Age proclaimed the series "the best series for Australian teens of all time..." and said "like ancient myths the stories confront the purpose of life, death, betrayal, killing, love, hate, revenge, selfishness, sacrifice and... faith". The Horn Book Magazine found the series "riveting" and said "thoughtful explorations of the nature of fear, bravery and violence add depth and balance to the edge-of-the-seat-action and intense first person narration".

Wilks made no indication as to which parts of his production were actually written by Grimaldi and which parts were original to Wilks. He also chose to change Grimaldi's first-person narration to the third person. In September 1837, Wilks offered the Memoirs to Richard Bentley, publisher of the magazine Bentley's Miscellany. Bentley bought it, after securing the copyright from Grimaldi's estate, but he thought it was still too long and also poorly edited, so he asked one of his favorite young writers, the novelist Charles Dickens, then twenty-five years old, to re-edit and re-write it.

For example, Mrs. Dubose chastises Scout for not wearing a dress and camisole, and indicates she is ruining the family name by not doing so, in addition to insulting Atticus' intentions to defend Tom Robinson. By balancing the masculine influences of Atticus and Jem with the feminine influences of Calpurnia and Miss Maudie, one scholar writes, "Lee gradually demonstrates that Scout is becoming a feminist in the South, for with the use of first- person narration, she indicates that Scout/ Jean Louise still maintains the ambivalence about being a Southern lady she possessed as a child." Absent mothers and abusive fathers are another theme in the novel.

The Dirty Girls Social Club is told in first person narration with the narration switching between six friends who all met in college: Lauren, Usnavys, Rebecca, Sara, Elisabeth and Amber. The friends have different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but find common ground due to their mutual Latina heritage and have nicknamed themselves the sucias (meaning dirty girls in Spanish) as a joke. The novel begins with the women reuniting for one of their regular scheduled meetings. Lauren, who works as a reporter for the Boston Globe, is struggling with an eating disorder and a noncommittal boyfriend but believes that the other women have their lives together.

James Sveck, 18, is an isolated young adult caught in the summer before he is to begin college at Brown University. The only person in his life with whom he is able to successfully relate is his grandmother; otherwise, James prefers solitude. Cameron's use of first person narration allows for the reader to create an intimate relationship with James as he works through his life and through the therapy sessions to which his parents have made him go. The reader learns about James’ present as he tells the events of his days, but the reader learns about his past when James reflects on his therapy sessions.

July 1929 saw the debut of Sailor Steve Costigan in the pages of Fight Stories. A tough-as- nails, two-fisted mariner with a head of rocks and occasionally a heart of gold, Costigan began boxing his way through a variety of exotic seaports and adventure locales, becoming so popular in Fight Stories that the same editors began using additional Costigan episodes in their sister magazine Action Stories. The series saw a return to Howard's use of humor and (unreliable) first-person narration, with the combination of a traditional tall tale and slapstick comedy. Stories sold to Fight Stories provided Howard with a market just as stable as Weird Tales.

Alvarez has also been said to follow the stylistic traditions established by novels such as Pedro Juan Labarthe's The Son of Two Nations: The Private Life of a Columbia Student (1931), Marcio Veloz Maggiolo's El prófugo (1962), Humberto Cintrón's Frankie Cristo (1972), and Richard Ruiz's The Hungry American (1978). Despite the overtly North American stylistic qualities the book appears to boast at first glance, each of the aforementioned authors are of Hispanic descent. Julie Barak emphasizes the significance of "one other stylistic idiosyncrasy of the work that adds to the sophistication of [Alvarez's] artistry" as there is a marked transition from third to first person narration for each girl in the last section of the novel.

The Metamorphoses places a large emphasis on the narrative device of the extended monologue. The epic features thirteen monologues that are a minimum of fifteen lines and are delivered by a wide variety of characters. The purpose of these monologues is exactly the same as their purpose in ancient tragedy: "to articulate thoughts, laments, questions, plans, and rationales" that would otherwise not be expressed in the action or that must be shown in a first person narration. Monologues in Ovid's epics, as in their tragic predecessors, aim to transform the character in some way by calling attention to their inner workings and emotions and how they affect the dramatic action surrounding them.

Ninth-grader Will Fuller shadows his father, the vice president of an international trading company based in the World Trade Center. He is not looking forward to the visit, as his father has always been very focused on his work and Will worries that his father will not bother to make time for him. Will's visit takes place on the morning of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and is told in rapid first- person narration as Will, his father, and other staff in the tower offices attempt to escape during the building's collapse. Will's best friend James's father works as a New York firefighter, adding another element of danger to the narrative.

The two series are finally brought together in the thirteenth novel in the Vlad series, Tiassa, which can also be viewed as the sixth novel in the Khaavren series. Tiassa comprises what are in effect three related novellas, each told in a different style and connected by a common theme. The first section reads like the first three novels in the series, with a first-person narration by Vlad but including Khaavren's son, Piro; the second section has a different viewpoint character in each of its chapters; and the third section is narrated by Paarfi in the style of the earlier Khaavren Romances, with Khaavren as the viewpoint character and interacting with Vlad.

"Coming of Age" examines themes of growing into adulthood, as well as ideas of gender and sexuality. In deliberate contrast to The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin's previous work which was set on the same fictional planet, Le Guin uses feminine pronouns for all the Gethenians when they are not in kemmer, and uses male or female pronouns for individuals in kemmer, depending on what sex they take on. She does the same in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", another short story set on Gethen, first written in 1969. In addition, first-person narration discusses the difficulty of telling a story about people without fixed male or female characteristics, in a language that only has gendered pronouns.

Melville was familiar with the article, which described: Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a similar symbolism and single-minded motivation in hunting this whale, in that when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them: Mocha Dick had over 100 encounters with whalers in the decades between 1810 and the 1830s. He was described as being gigantic and covered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, Mocha Dick was not the only white whale in the sea, nor the only whale to attack hunters.

The novel follows the life of Clay, a rich, young college student who has returned to his hometown of Los Angeles, California for winter break circa 1984. Through first-person narration, Clay describes his progressive alienation from the culture around him, loss of faith in his friends, and his meditations on events in his recent past. After reuniting with his ex-girlfriend Blair, and friends like Trent, now a successful model, Clay embarks on a series of drug-fueled nights of partying, during which he has one-night stands with both sexes. While partying, he tries to track down his best friend from high school, Julian, with whom he hasn't spoken in months.

Though its title is similar to The Forever War and both novels deal with soldiers in the future, Forever Peace is not a direct sequel, and takes place on a different future of Earth in the year 2048. Using remotely controlled robots called "soldierboys" (which are nearly invincible), the Alliance military fights third world guerrillas in an endless series of economy-driven wars. As only first world nations possess the nanoforge technology that can produce anything from basic materials, conflict is largely asymmetric. The novel is told partly in first-person narration by the main character, Julian Class, and partly by an anonymous third-person narrator, who is able to comment on aspects of Julian's personality and background.

The book uses the frame story literary device; the frame is presented in first-person narration as the remembrances of an elderly woman in 1995, whose name is initially not revealed to the reader. However, the main action of the book is told in third-person, following two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, who live in France around 1939, on the eve of World War II. The two sisters are estranged from each other and their father, and the book follows the two different paths they take. Vianne, the eldest sister, is a married schoolteacher raising her daughter Sophie in the town of Carriveau. Vianne's husband Antoine is drafted and subsequently captured as a prisoner of war.

As a result of this relationship, we know that Ruby's identity changed significantly where she calmly recounts, recalling Troy's words in first person narration "It's just the people in this place that distort me, like a reflection in the river...Sometimes different is a good thing". This quote is notably important to help us understand Ruby's identity growth in the novel. She finally accepts that being different isn't necessarily a bad thing and knows that it was just her town's perception all along. Her identity further grows in the novel, through her character development where she develops more mother like characteristics of care and worry, allowing us to deduce that her confidence has given her that high maturity and identity growth.

Les Ames fortes (1950), filmed by Raoul Ruiz in 2001, is another of the masterpieces of this period. As dark as Un Roi sans divertissement, it examines the depths a person can sink to in greed, grasping self-interest and the exploitation of others. Also as in Un Roi sans divertissement, the story is again told purely in the words of the protagonists, without the intervention of a narrator or comment from the author, thus forcing readers to reach their own conclusions. Les Grands chemins (1951), considerably less dark, deals with the nature of the road, gambling, the lie, and friendship, again in a first-person narration entirely in the voice of the protagonist and devoid of explanation or elucidation from the author.

The heterogeneous structure of the novel has been described as "distinctly post- modern", and was unusual for the time of its publication, in marked contrast to (primarily male-authored) traditional science fiction, which was straightforward and linear. In 1999, literary scholar Donna White wrote that the unorthodox structure of the novel made it initially confusing to reviewers, before it was interpreted as an attempt to follow the trajectory of Ai's changing views. Also in contrast to what was typical for male authors of the period, Le Guin narrated the action in the novel through the personal relationships she depicted. Ai's first-person narration reflects his slowly developing view, and the reader's knowledge and understanding of the Gethens evolves with Ai's awareness.

A first person narrator with a limited perspective is not able to witness or understand all facets of any situation. Thus, a narrator with this perspective will not be able to report the circumstances fully and will leave the reader with a subjective record of the plot details. Additionally, this narrator's character could be pursuing a hidden agenda or may be struggling with mental or physical challenges that further hamper their ability to tell the reader the whole, accurate truth of events. This form includes temporary first-person narration as a story within a story, wherein a narrator or character observing the telling of a story by another is reproduced in full, temporarily and without interruption shifting narration to the speaker.

Daniella Trimboli argues that instead of focusing on multiplicities, Fleming deconstructs the idea of singular truth by blending traditional documentary forms with her non-conventional storytelling techniques. Fleming does this by combining comic-book strips for Sam's origin stories and animation of characters in old photographs with interviews, first-person narration and old footage. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam is part of a subgenre that Jim Lane calls the 'family portrait documentary' in which the boundaries of private and public histories intersect as the filmmaker's life interweaves with the family in focus, as an autobiography layering the biography of the family. An example as such is Fleming's profession directly affecting Sam's; the movies were overtaking vaudeville in the American mainstream entertainment business.

Set in 2003, the novel consists of three parts: "The Beginning," "Middle" and "The End." Each part contains four separate narrations, one focusing on each member of the Smart family: Eve, the mother, Michael, her husband, Astrid (12) and Magnus (17), two children of Eve’s from a previous marriage (to Adam Berenski). Opening and closing the novel, and between each part, we have four sections of first-person narration from ‘Alhambra’ – who we can assume is Amber, the Smarts' uninvited house-guest. The novel opens with Alhambra telling us of her conception in ‘the town’s only cinema’. We then come to “The Beginning”, which consists of a third-person narration focused first on Astrid, then Magnus, then Michael, then finally Eve.

Tales From The Afternow is a Cyberpunk Internet radio serial drama started by Kennedy on June 24, 2002. The show is portrayed as a series of audio diary entries made from a future Dystopia, in which copyright legislation has been applied to all areas of life, adversely affecting the civil rights of the protagonist. Tales From The Afternow's first-person narration, combined with sound effects, create a future universe in which the fictional Independent Librarian Dynamic Sean Kennedy the Sixth interacts and observes the world around him, while "remembering" and reminiscing about that which has come before. In doing so, he also tells stories from "before his time" including several "legends" that offer alternative views on religion, government, and society as it has developed.

Antoine François Prévost Candide First page of the 1753 edition of Manon Lescaut. Pierre Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos Jacques-Henri Bernardin The novel in the 18th century saw innovations in form and content which opened the way for the modern novel, a work of fiction in prose recounting the adventures or the evolution of one or several characters. In the 18th century the genre of the novel enjoyed a great increase in readership, and was marked by the effort to convey feelings realistically, through such literary devices as first-person narration, exchanges of letters, and dialogues, all trying to show, in the spirit of the lumieres, a society which was evolving. The French novel was strongly influenced by the English novel, through the translation of the works of Samuel Richardson, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe.

After realizing how many Greek and Roman myths he had left untouched as well the immense success of the original series, Riordan began writing a second series, using inspiration for his storyline from experiences that he and his children had while playing video and role-playing games such as World of Warcraft and Scion. After creating the storyline, Riordan created three new main characters—Jason, Piper, and Leo—but continued to use the previous main characters such as Annabeth and Grover as secondary characters. Unlike the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series which uses first-person narration solely from Percy's point of view, the second series is told in third-person, with the point of view alternating between various main characters. In The Lost Hero, those characters are Jason, Piper, and Leo.

Schedeen, Jesse. "Fear Itself: Sin's Past #1 Review". IGN. April 20, 2011 Fear Itself: The Worthy is an anthology origin book in which Sin and each of the Worthy detail the major events of their life in first-person narration, with each vignette concluding with an open-ended look to the future.Schedeen, Jesse. "Fear Itself: The Worthy #1 Review". IGN. July 27, 2011 The Mighty Thor #7 establishes the Serpent's origin story, revealing him to have been the sibling to Odin, Vili and Vi, who assumed the throne of Asgard following the death of their father, Bor, at the dawn of time, and whose rule was marked by madness and corruption. Odin sacrificed his right eye to receive wisdom from Yggdrasil, which prophesied that to heal his brother, Odin would have to sacrifice his son.

The major difference between As I Lay Dying and See You Tomorrow in terms of narration and style, lies in the fact that Renberg does not use first person narration, monologue or strict stream of consciousness. See You Tomorrow is told through 11 narrators, in the third person, but using a very intimate narrative tone, to the extent that the reader almost feels like it is a first person in disguise. The chapters are named with titles, blending a feel of the classic 19th century novel of Dickens or Balzac, with the modern rock album and American grit/pulp. Tore Renberg has several times stated music as a significant influence for his work, and more than ever with See You Tomorrow (Significance of music in See You Tomorrow).

Torpor follows Jerome Shafir, a literature professor at Columbia, his wife, Sylvie Green, a writer and filmmaker with an inconclusive career, and their dog Lily through rustbelt New York City, Paris, Berlin, and the Eastern Bloc at the dawn of the New World Order. A portrait of a Holocaust survivor as well as of a marriage, Torpor also depicts a woman rarely found in literature: a down-and-out intellectual bearing witness to a culture in collapse. Kraus shifts out of the first-person narration of I Love Dick, and in naming her central characters Sylvie and Jerome, she alludes to the hapless, interchangeable protagonists of George Perec's first novel, Les Choses. Perec, a childhood friend of both Torpor's Jerome and Kraus's real- life husband, Sylvère Lotringer, is quoted several times in the novel.

"The Gangster of Love" refers to the name of the band formed by several characters in the novel, including Rocky. The name was inspired by a dream Rocky had after taking acid: "A choir of fat, menacing angels wearing yellow satin robes sang this song by Johnny Guitar Watson called 'Gangster of Love'." While written in English, Hagedorn includes some Tagalog (Filipino words), particularly in the dialogue and goes so far as to use the Filipino as a distinctive characteristic that sets the more Filipino characters apart from the Filipino-Americans. Though Rocky acts as the first-person narrator for most of the novel, Hagedorn, writes certain portions omniscient narration, once in a while giving the points of view of other characters without the use of first person narration.

After realizing how many Greek and Roman myths he had left untouched as well the immense success of the original series, Riordan began writing a second series, using inspiration for his storyline from experiences that he and his children had while playing video and role-playing games such as World of Warcraft and Scion. After creating the storyline, Riordan created three new main characters—Jason, Piper, and Leo—but continued to use the previous main characters such as Annabeth and Grover as secondary characters. Rick Riordan (pictured) came up with The Heroes of Olympus after toying with the idea of Roman gods. Unlike the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, which uses first- person narration solely from Percy's point of view, the second series is told in third person, with the point of view alternating between various main characters.

The Prince of West End Avenue is the first novel by Alan Isler, published in 1994. The novel is a first-person narration by Otto Korner (formerly Körner) and intertwines a comedy about staging Hamlet in a Jewish retirement home, the Emma Lazarus, with flashbacks concerning the early life of the protagonist, his two marriages, the creation of Dada, and the Holocaust. It won the National Jewish Book Award and the JQ Wingate Prize and was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996. Described by The New York Times as 'a paradoxical tale of how to make peace with an unbearable past and the sin of pride', the novel only reveals the tragic events haunting the narrator just before the end, lending perspective to the comic concerns of the staging of Hamlet.

Nakayama had started playing the game prior to starting work on the localization, but did not finish playing it until she was more than halfway through translating it; after learning that the plot hinged on a Japanese pun, they had to halt the localization to discuss it with Uchikoshi and come up with a solution, after which they went through the whole game to make sure that it still made sense. Another problem Bateman ran into was related to the game's first person narration. A plot twist regarding the narration relied on the use of gender- specific first person pronouns at specific points in the story. As this would not work in English, the narration was made to instead be in the third person, and the twist's effect was replicated by shifting from third to first person at a specific story point.

Nomura also placed image colors to each main character to give hints regarding their personalities. Since both the player and the main character find themselves in a new world, Nojima wanted Tidus' understanding of the world to reflect the player's progress in the game; a connection that allowed the player to advance Tidus' first-person narration of most of Final Fantasy X. Sub-character chief designer Fumi Nakashima's focus was to ensure that characters from different regions and cultures bore distinctive characteristics in their clothing styles, so that they could be quickly and easily identified as members of their respective sub-groups. For example, she has said that the masks and goggles of the Al Bhed give the group a "strange and eccentric" appearance, while the attire of the Ronso lend to them being able to easily engage in battle. Final Fantasy X features innovations in the rendering of characters' facial expressions, achieved through motion capture and skeletal animation technology.

" Kiely wrote that "Tamaki and Valero-O'Connell slyly undercut the rocky romance, preventing it from veering into melodrama with endearing moments between the girls' other friends and flashes of humor," adding that the author–illustrator duo's "tenderhearted narrative sings with real, honest emotion that will resonate with anyone trying to figure out love." Quill & Quire also commended the two's collaboration, writing "Tamaki and Valero-O'Connell have developed a sophisticated storytelling dynamic, which involves sparse dialogue pushing the narrative forward while detailed illustrative attention to body language and facial expressions provides the emotion." Forbes writer Rob Salkowitz wrote that Laura Deans inclusion of a "depoliticized and unfussy depiction of gender-fluid teen culture in the 2010s" makes the novel "a step forward in LGBTQ graphic literature." Katie Bircher of The Horn Book Magazine praised the novel's writing, as she opined that "Freddy's insightful and painfully honest first-person narration [...] is balanced by dialogue full of witty banter and warm moments of friendship.

After scoring four number-one hits in a row, the single "I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am" peaked at number 3 on the Billboard country singles chart. The song is a first person narration by a homeless drifter who laments his lonely, rootless existence but at the same time celebrates "living off the side of our great land..." as he defiantly proclaims, "Things I learned in a hobo jungle are things they never taught me in a classroom." Aside from the jaunty "I'm Bringing Home Good News," the album is largely a stripped down affair with arrangements and instrumentation that reveal a pop and folk music influence, such as on the title track. Pride in What I Am also showcases Haggard's affection for the blues on the comically self-loathing "I Can't Hold Myself In Line" and the Jimmie Rodgers classic "California Blues (Blue Yodel #4)" (Haggard's next studio album would be a tribute to Rodgers, released three months after this one).

There were no known Hollywood movies with an all-Asian cast at the time, and making a film with Chinese protagonists was risky especially because Asian actors were not well known to American audiences. Ronald Bass, with whom Wang and Tan teamed up since their meeting at the Hotel Bel-Air in January 1990, analyzed the novel and outlined how to bring it to the screen, with "no single lead character." Because many studios found the novel's "characters and plot [...] too internal and complex" to adapt into a film, Bass added two additional changes without changing the main plot: June Woo's farewell party as the film's timeline setting and the first-person narration in addition to voiceovers to compress the film's storytelling. Wayne Wang, Amy Tan, and Ronald Bass teamed up with the Ixtlan Corporation, including its staff members, Oliver Stone and Janet Yang, who was the company's vice president and had a profound interest in the project.

Influenced by the pulps, radio soap operas, newspaper comic strips such as Mary Worth, and adult confession magazines, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created the flagship romance comic book Young Romance and launched it in 1947 to resounding success. By the early 1950s, dozens of romance titles from major comics publishers were on the newsstands and drug store racks. Young Romance, Young Love and their imitators differed from the earlier teen humor comics in that they aspired to realism, using first-person narration to create the illusion of verisimilitude, a changing cast of characters in self-contained stories, and heroines in their late teens or early twenties who were closer to the target audience in age than teen humor characters. With the implementation of the Comics Code in 1954, romance comics publishers self-censored any material that might be interpreted as controversial and opted to play it safe with stories focusing on traditional patriarchal concepts of female behavior, gender roles, love, sex, and marriage.

Through each character we obtain a different view of how Amber came into their lives, and who they believed her to be, when she arrived unannounced and uninvited at their Norfolk holiday home, claiming her car had broken down. Through “The Beginning”, we learn of Astrid’s obsession with video-taping her life, seemingly as proof it existed; of Magnus’ involvement in a school prank which resulted in the suicide of one of his classmates; of Michael’s affairs with his students (he is a university lecturer); and of Eve’s writer’s block. The second first-person narration we have from Alhambra is altogether different from the first – here we are not offered her history, but rather a history of 20th century cinema – a past which she seems to adopt as her own, as if she were each of the characters in those films. “The Middle” deals, again, with each of the family members’ experiences of Amber: she throws Astrid’s camera off a bridge into the road, she seduces Magnus, and reveals flaws in Eve and Michael’s relationship. “The Middle” ends with Eve throwing Amber out of their holiday home.

Michael Marcus (the father of Ben Marcus, the character) opens Notable American Women with several warnings – most notably, that his own offspring, Ben, may very well be mentally handicapped – and ponders reflectively, "How can one word from Ben Marcus's rotten, filthy heart be trusted?" With that, Ben Marcus (the author) launches into a lengthy first-person narration with Ben Marcus as guide, allowing the reader to decide if, and how, any of the words can be trusted. Playing with the English language in such a manner that his work has drawn comparison's to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, among other novels, Marcus describes the cultish, recondite practises of his mother, her enigmatic mentor Jane Dark, and their legion of disciples as they attempt to create perfect stillness in the world by eliminating the "wind violence" of speech and, ultimately, physical movement. Dark, witty, and depressing in its ironic hilarity, Notable American Women allows the reader to delve into the mind of a well-meaning but obtuse young man, to glimpse into his turbulent upbringing full of radical experimentation and forced-breeding (among other things) and, possibly, to become attached.