QotW #101 Flashbacks

[Shel, Moderator]

What books have you enjoyed that jump around in time (e.g. alternate "present day" with flashback chapters)?

[Cheryl]

Rereading Project Hail Mary right now. Works very well for this, but often bothers me.

[Shel, Moderator]

I thought it was well done in The Lies of Locke Lamora.

Outside of genre, Killers of a Certain Age did it in an interesting way - the “present day” chapters were told in first person, the flashback chapters were in third person present tense. It made it feel like the flashbacks were almost like being in an immersive movie of the character’s memories. That book is quite a fun romp, btw!

[Kathi, Moderator & Book Lover]

My memory is a sieve, but I think The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin had time jumps. They were confusing at first, but ended up being very effective (if I recall correctly).

[Nachiket]

I quite enjoyed The Matchmaker's Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman which has two timelines, early and late 20th century New York (with the protagonists being grandmother and granddaughter).

[Random]

Been a busy week and I'm a little late.

I've had a lot of problems answering this one. There are so many books that make use of flashbacks in one way or another. And a few that came immediately to mind have already been mentioned.

Did The Fifth Season use flashbacks or was its narration just taking place at multiple points in time? Its been a while since I read it and I can't remember the details well enough. Great book though and I really enjoyed how she handled following the character through three points of her life.

The Lies of Locke Lamora
Makes real heavy use of flashbacks. In fact, if my memory serves me right, so do the other books in the series. I really enjoyed their use here.

Blindsight also made heavy use of flashbacks, bouncing between pre and post Firefall.

Project Hail Mary
The use of flashbacks here was cleaver. We got to discover portions of the character's past as he discovered/remembered them. It paints a different picture of him all the while underlining how much he has actually changed/become a different person.

Honestly, I think flashbacks are useful tools. There are times it makes absolutely no sense to tell a story in 100% chronological order. These characters had lives before the book starts. Things happened to them. Things happened in the world. There is technically no "true" beginning. A flashback allows the author to provide information to the reader when that information is needed instead of info dumping at the start.

They also allow the author to show and not tell, and showing is almost always better than telling. There is a larger emotion reaction if we watch a character go through something as compared to being told that a character went through something. We're less removed from the event.

[Kathi, Moderator & Book Lover]

Random wrote: "Did The Fifth Season use flashbacks or was its narration just taking place at multiple points in time? Its been a while since I read it and I can't remember the details well enough. Great book though and I really enjoyed how she handled following the character through three points of her life."

I guess I thought that if the narration takes place at multiple points in time, with some of those points being earlier in the characters’ lives, that is using flashbacks. But definitely, the narrative in The Fifth Season was not linear in terms of time. I am also relying on my memory…

[Random]

Kathi wrote: "I guess I thought that if the narration takes place at multiple points in time, with some of those points being earlier in the characters’ lives, that is using flashbacks."

From what I understand, a flashback is a scene or scenes, taking place in the past, that are interjected into the story of present day. I personally would not consider that the same as the narration taking place in multiple points in time that are presented out of order.

Still a great book, and series of books, and the author made good use of the multiple perspectives form the same character. Her Inheritance series has some similar bits as well.

[Shel, Moderator]

Fifth Season spoiler.

(view spoiler)[The unusual thing about the book is that the three storylines involve the same character, but the reader doesn't know it at first since she's using a different name at each point and there are no other clues that it's taking place at a different time, if I'm remembering correctly. (hide spoiler)]

It's an unusual way of presenting a flashback, but I guess I'd still call it that.

[Kathi, Moderator & Book Lover]

Random wrote: "Kathi wrote: "I guess I thought that if the narration takes place at multiple points in time, with some of those points being earlier in the characters’ lives, that is using flashbacks."

From what..."

Thanks. I can see that flashbacks would be different from ongoing narration in different timelines. I never thought about that distinction.

[Cheryl]

Nor did I. But it's a valid distinction in some books. I can see. But I agree w/Shel about Fifth Season, too.

[Random]

Another jumped to mind for me
The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The majority of the story is actually a flash back to the main character's childhood.