Member-only story
THE NARRATIVE ARC
Even When We Don’t Recognize It, Life’s Packed with Decision Moments
The critical decision points in my life are legion, and often surprising
Have you noticed the plethora of recent books in which the main character relives the same life, making different choices with each iteration? What is Literature — that grand salon of the collective unconscious — trying to tell us?
By my count, the past decade or so has brought us many main characters who relive critical moments of their lives, with the gift/curse of being able to make other choices. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Life After Life, All You Need is Kill, Before I Fall, and many others — including a new one recommended last week by my local library which I can NOT find in my emails now — add up to minor literary wave.
Literature holds up a mirror
Just as literary vampires, witches, and magic schools tell us something about our shared inner life, the current passion for life/life/lift says reveals a hint of what we are processing — personally and as a society — right now.
The queen of vampires, Anne Rice, wrote the seminal Interview with a Vampire after her daughter died of cancer. The arbitrary, predatory, and…
