Showing through Telling

Chapters 7 and 8 see my prediction from yesterday's entry come true. After about 37 pages, the two have had sex, and chapter 9 ends off with the two hooking up again. And, as with the rest of his writing, Bakker writes these scenes sparsely.

In fact, what I've come to conclude is that Bakker's style is to show through telling. However, I don't think this works against him or makes him a less engaging writer to read.

Instead, I think showing through telling sets Bakker up for some very imagistic lines that can be incredibly effective, interesting, and perfectly placed.

Like when Sam leaves the morning after she and Tom have fucked, as she drives away Bakker writes that "The sound of her car had teeth." Up until that point we're bombarded with Tom trying to see how Sam works with his kids and how they work with them. In his own words, Tom tries to give Sam a sense of how he is in his natural habitat, and from his actions, thoughts, and ultimate last few words to Sam it seems like this goes awkwardly, and almost badly. And then we get that image after a lot of direct, telly writing.

Really, the only things that Bakker seems to dwell on - that is, on which he provides us with more than a few sentences strung into a runty paragraph - are his character's thoughts. Since this is a third person limited novel with - so far - just one viewpoint character, that means we spend a lot of time in Tom's head. Bakker spends a lot of words in there, and he walks us through the various neurological/psychological concepts that he wants to get across.

This presentation makes it a little bit like a pared down textbook narrated by a psychologist, but since most thrillers push some agenda or other on the reader, it's refreshing to see that this book's agenda is to challenge notions of consciousness and to get readers wondering about thought and the brain themselves.

More on the story next time.