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IvanOpinion asked this question about Girl, Woman, Other:
For those who 'eye' read the book, did you think the unconventional punctuation served a worthwhile purpose? (I'll provide my view in my answer to my own question.)
IvanOpinion Here is my answer to my own question.

I loved the book, but this aspect of it puzzles me.

I think part of the reason I ask is that I 'read' the audioboo…moreHere is my answer to my own question.

I loved the book, but this aspect of it puzzles me.

I think part of the reason I ask is that I 'read' the audiobook and from this I had no clue that it had been written without punctuating the start and finish of sentences.

I knew little about the book at the outset and it was only when I finished and I then discussed it with someone who read it on paper that I learned about the (lack of) punctuation. This makes me wonder what was achieved by eschewing sentence punctuation.

I thought back: the audiobook narration did not sound any different to a normally punctuated novel. I don't remember being puzzled about what was a sentence, so much so that the question never even occurred to me at the time.

This made me start to wonder if the narrator had added pauses or intonation to indicate what she saw as being a sentence, even though they weren't there. I suspect so, in which case I wondered if the narrator had therefore effectively dumbed down (or at least lost) part of the experience of what the author intended?

But now I look at the written text it seems generally clear where the punctuation would be. Perhaps there is the occasional paragraph where a reader might need to slow down, momentarily, to work out what is meant, but not often. Perhaps it would have been harder if the paragraphs contained several sentences, but they do not.

I can see how this sort of approach can achieve a literary effect in some novels, such as helping the reader to share the disorientation or perception problems of a character or to show a stream of consciousness. But neither of these approaches seem to apply here.

It seems to me that the book is in fact written in sentences, but just without conventional punctuation to denote them. So, the narrator was not imposing structure that was not intended; she just spoke what was implicit (even though it would normally be explicit).

Perhaps the book shows that sentence punctuation is not essential to interpretation, which might be of interest in an academic linguistic sense, but I could not really see any literary purpose. That is, if the punctuation had been normal (which it effectively seems to be if you audioread it), the book would have been just as good.

But perhaps I would have had a different experience if I had 'eye' read the book first, so I'm curious if people who did so feel that the (lack of) punctuation somehow enhanced their experience.(less)
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Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo
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