Jen Levine
asked:
Does anyone have any idea what the author would choose to write this book without any quotation marks?
To answer questions about
Long Bright River,
please sign up.
OMalleycat
I think it’s to emphasize the story is told strictly from Mickey’s point of view. There’s no omniscient narrator reporting what was said word for word; it’s just Mickey’s version. It also renders the dialogue distant, terse, and just-the-facts like a police report, which would be emotionally repressed Mickey’s style.
Lisa
I guess it’s a style, albeit a really annoying one.
Lauren
This bothered me to no end.
Linda Gaines
I love when writers do that.
Joni Zalk
I think it makes it really black and white - colorless, just like Mickey is. There are rarely shades of grey and no color in her world.
T.J. Gillespie
This is very common in European literature. Joyce made it popular for writers in English. Roddy Doyle, Tessa Hadely, others. It's simply a matter of style.
Amy
Try the audio its filled after each sentence with , I said, She said, He said etc. Jarring.
Dee
it's a thing these days. I don't know if the author went through an MFA program, but that is the fashion among MFA grads these days. #longlivethequotationmarks
Jeanne
I never even noticed it. I started reading and didn’t put it down until I finished the book.
Nessie
I like that there was no quotation marks myself. I wish more books were wrote in this way. That being said I really enjoyed this book- after reading this it makes me extremely grateful that my family members or I never suffered with this addiction. My heart goes out to those that have went through this.
Paula
This drove me crazy. I could not read it.
Linda C
She used dashes so you knew it was dialogue . It wasn't like some writers who use nothing. I thought it was fine.
My bigger peeve was the amount of white space on many pages. I hate when publishers do that. This was maybe a 350 page book but it was listed as 485... a third of which was white space.
My bigger peeve was the amount of white space on many pages. I hate when publishers do that. This was maybe a 350 page book but it was listed as 485... a third of which was white space.
Lisa
I was just about to add this to my TBR; going to pass after seeing this question. This is a difficult style to read, indeed.
Candace
I found her approach to dialogue annoying at first, but once I got into the story I really wasn’t noticing it anymore....but it did seem sort of an affectation.
Sharon
It’s her style. She did it with God of the Woods.
Mark
No, but it's very annoying.
Amy
I normally won't read a book with no quotation marks... I wait until I can listen to it on audiobook. This one was for my book club so I forced myself to read it (and I did enjoy it) but it bugged me the entire time. This kind of cutesy approach to punctuation takes me out of the "flow" I'm normally in when reading a story -- I'm concentrating on, "wait, did someone say that or is that narrative?" instead of getting lost in the story.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more