“A writer may have a story to tell, a sense of plot, and strong...
“A writer may have a story to tell, a sense of plot, and strong
characters, but for all of these to come together some key questions
must be answered. What form should the narrator take? An omniscient,
invisible force, or one–or more–of the characters? But in what voice,
and from what vantage point? How to decide? Avoiding prescriptive
instructions or arbitrary rules, Christopher Castellani brilliantly
examines the various ways writers have solved the crucial point-of-view
problem. By unpacking the narrative strategies at play in the work of
writers as different as E. M. Forster, Grace Paley, and Tayeb Salih,
among many others, he illustrates how the author’s careful manipulation
of distance between narrator and character drives the story. An
insightful work by an award-winning novelist and the artistic director
of GrubStreet, The Art of Perspective is a fascinating discussion on a subject of perpetual interest to any writer.”
