Past-tense Problems

            The epistolary writing style means that the story is written in letters. The actual plot of the book is written in flashbacks as Liza reflects on her relationship with Annie. This style of writing is not my ideal reading choice, but I do see its usefulness in creating characterization. While reading, this style can be both infuriating and reassuring.

            The book starts with words that Liza wishes she could speak to Annie (3). This draws the reader away from setting. The author could have said, “Liza looked out the window and the Statue of Liberty and in the distance, the Gateway Arch,” and few of the readers would have noticed, or cared about, this impossibility because we want to know why Liza wrote this instead of her homework and what it means. The writing style allows the author to focus on the characters, more specifically Annie, because from the first words, that is where our attention is drawn.

            To me, it is annoying to read a book that focuses so little on the present tense. It feels like I know the very ending of the story, but not the middle: not the how or the why. This is why it is reassuring as well. I know that nothing I am reading about in the past is going to mess up Liza’s goal of getting into MIT (4). What is even more irritating than the left out chunks of time is the way in which Liza reflects. I am forced to wonder whether or not her memory is faulty, glossing over the fights she and Annie have and remembering the good times more distinctly, as many of us do. The way that most reflect on a situation is different from the actual occurrence, especially when dealing with “love.”

            The characters, as I have said, are the most developed part of this story. However, this really applies to Annie the best, which does make sense. This is written by a college freshman reflecting on her first “love.” It seems like it is written by a 13-year-old. I work with middle schoolers and have seen them behave the way the Liza does: falling fast and hard, having only that person on their minds, seemingly floating through the rest of life (97), and believing that nothing bad will happen as long as they are together. By the freshman year of college, most of us know a little better than to believe any of these. The story being written in this style makes the characters more annoying to me than a story written in first-person, presents tense because, generally, in those stories, the main character will allude to obsessing over the one person, but we will be spared the details.

            I think that this story could have been more effective if it had been written in the present tense and ended with a time-skip to the middle of the freshman year of college. I think we would have seen a more believable relationship develop and we would have been told more negative emotions from Liza, rather than only the mostly positive ones and the few negative ones she chooses to remember. We also would not know if the two were still on speaking terms throughout the whole book. The fact that Annie still writes to Liza (4) tells us that their relationship was not ended by the problems we are seeing in the flashbacks and that ruins the suspense.