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Disclaimer: first-person is a reasonable way to tell some stories. This is a grumble about it being used poorly.
Specifically, I'm getting more annoyed at stories told in the first person, for which the existence of an audience from the viewpoint of the narrator is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.
A minor example is Robert Parker's Spenser novels, in some of which Spenser cheerfully describes himself, Hawk, or both breaking the law in ways that would make telling anyone about the events risky at best. (Enough is said about the main characters to make clear that the manuscript/narrative isn't addressed to any of them, nor is it a diary.) By contrast, while the framing "respectfully submitted" of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books can seem a bit unlikely, in most of them Kinsey doesn't admit to anything that could get her or a friend into legal trouble. [To be fair, it's been a while since I read either author.]
What provoked this grumble was re-reading Greg Egan's Quarantine and then reading Steve Cash's The Meq. ( Here there be spoilers )
The problem with the Egan didn't strike me the first time I read it, and probably wouldn't have this time if not for the juxtaposition with the Cash. The Meq is a fantasy novel about a group of people, called Meq, who look human but aren't quite: they're extremely long-lived, choose when to go through puberty and are almost immune to disease and injury until then, and have some other odd powers. They live in secret, for the most part, though they have some human allies who are aware of their existence. And the narrator proceeds to fill in information that no Meq could need to be told, and that they wouldn't want to share with anyone outside, even their human allies.
The book has other flaws--ranging from an unreasonable reliance on coincidence to drive the plot [having characters repeatedly note that "these sorts of things happen" doesn't help] to an implausible-to-me set-up in which every Meq has a destined beloved, and is aware of her/his identity the first time they set eyes on each other. It also, to my mind, ends in the wrong place: a puzzle has been set up, but doesn't come close to being answered, nor is much else resolved.
Specifically, I'm getting more annoyed at stories told in the first person, for which the existence of an audience from the viewpoint of the narrator is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.
A minor example is Robert Parker's Spenser novels, in some of which Spenser cheerfully describes himself, Hawk, or both breaking the law in ways that would make telling anyone about the events risky at best. (Enough is said about the main characters to make clear that the manuscript/narrative isn't addressed to any of them, nor is it a diary.) By contrast, while the framing "respectfully submitted" of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books can seem a bit unlikely, in most of them Kinsey doesn't admit to anything that could get her or a friend into legal trouble. [To be fair, it's been a while since I read either author.]
What provoked this grumble was re-reading Greg Egan's Quarantine and then reading Steve Cash's The Meq. ( Here there be spoilers )
The problem with the Egan didn't strike me the first time I read it, and probably wouldn't have this time if not for the juxtaposition with the Cash. The Meq is a fantasy novel about a group of people, called Meq, who look human but aren't quite: they're extremely long-lived, choose when to go through puberty and are almost immune to disease and injury until then, and have some other odd powers. They live in secret, for the most part, though they have some human allies who are aware of their existence. And the narrator proceeds to fill in information that no Meq could need to be told, and that they wouldn't want to share with anyone outside, even their human allies.
The book has other flaws--ranging from an unreasonable reliance on coincidence to drive the plot [having characters repeatedly note that "these sorts of things happen" doesn't help] to an implausible-to-me set-up in which every Meq has a destined beloved, and is aware of her/his identity the first time they set eyes on each other. It also, to my mind, ends in the wrong place: a puzzle has been set up, but doesn't come close to being answered, nor is much else resolved.
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