Moon Tiger | Techniques

Moon Tiger Techniques

In contrast to the generally realist approach of her first six novels, the narrative technique Lively uses in Moon Tiger is startlingly unconventional, involving a chorus of points of view and a jumble of time frames that fracture chronology. Framing the novel is the action of time present, the span of a week or so during which Claudia lies dying in her London hospital bed.

Most chapters begin with this frame, in which an objective third-person narrator, using present tense, reports dialogue and actions without peering into characters' thoughts. The narrative then shifts to Claudia's intimate firstperson point of view, with some occurrence in the room causing her to launch into a mental chain of associations involving personal memories and reflections on history. She usually dwells, in past tense, upon a particular memory, and then the narrative shifts again, this time to a kaleidoscopic sequence of present-tense, limitedthird-person...
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