The “Novel of Recollections” – Narration as a Means of Coming to Terms with the Past

Petr Chalupský

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.5n.2p.90

Abstract

Among the large body of contemporary British novels dealing with the past, one specific genre can be identified, and called, the “novel of recollections” as it revolves around its first person narrator’s coming to terms with the often traumatic memories of his or her past life. This article focuses on this genre and its characteristic features, both formal and concerning the content, in John Banville’s The Sea (2005), Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007) and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending (2011). Using the example of Graham Swift’s Tomorrow (2007), this article also shows that these features alone may not necessarily guarantee the text’s positive reception, suggests the main reasons why Swift’s novel failed with most readers and critics, and contemplates the novel of recollections’ future course and development.

Highlights

A specific and very popular form of contemporary British literature is a fictional narrative that could be given a working label of the “novel of recollections”
The narration discloses various bygone offences, unpleasant incidents and experiences which, deep inside, torment the narrator and which have substantially affected his/her life, including his/her dismal present situation, and so, in his/her thoughts he/she tries to search for their roots or to overcome a long-term urge to displace them from memory
A serene recapitulation of long forgone events transforms into a dramatic and often painful coming to terms with the past and with the present and, along with that, with the immediate future, with other people’s fates but, above all, with him/herself and his/her own conscience. This kind of a novel is in no way thematically original in the context of contemporary British fiction as the theme and motif of recollecting and journeying through the memory back to the past in order to achieve its better understanding, re-living or even its complete re-evaluating appears in the works of a few prominent prose writers of the last two decades of the twentieth century

Summary

Introduction

A specific and very popular form of contemporary British literature is a fictional narrative that could be given a working label of the “novel of recollections”. A serene recapitulation of long forgone events transforms into a dramatic and often painful coming to terms with the past and with the present and, along with that, with the immediate future, with other people’s fates but, above all, with him/herself and his/her own conscience This kind of a novel is in no way thematically original in the context of contemporary British fiction as the theme and motif of recollecting and journeying through the memory back to the past in order to achieve its better understanding, re-living or even its complete re-evaluating appears in the works of a few prominent prose writers of the last two decades of the twentieth century. It mentions its potential difficulties and pitfalls which can cause the text’s predictability, schematisation or unconvincingness, and shows that the formal side itself and the mere presence of a certain number of these features does not automatically ensure positive readers’ and critical reception

The Novel of Recollections

A Less Successful Case – Tomorrow

Conclusion