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Nada The Lily Q1 - Frame
Nada the Lily uses the device of a frame story - the actual story is told within the 'frame' of an elderly Mopo recounting the tale to an anonymous white man (assumably Haggard himself) - rather than directly as most books are written. The story comes in the voice of Mopo and from his viewpoint. Does this device work for you in this case? What is good about it? What is not so good?
Comments
I didn't really care for this. I'm not against frame stories in general, but this seemed like an unnessesary complication, that resulted in clumsy sentences where he seemed to be calling other people his father. To paraphrase as example, he might say "Nada, my father, was not pleased," which is a sentence that can be read 2 ways, but the way he means it to be read is the less obvious way IMO.
I quite like frame stories - the usual problem is that it often gives away part of the characters' stories thus blocking future development. But in this case I don't think that happened, partly because the listener is not personally involved in the events of the main story.
I think the frame structure worked fine here. It gave an explanation for why British Victorians were paying attention to a story told by a Black man about other Black men. It also emphasised that this was a biased narrator's account of the facts, not an omniscient narrator.
I kept picking this up and putting it down again. Couldn't connect with it at all and DNF'ed about halfway through.