See the Other Side

In my post today on the Friggin' Write blog, I give a very positive review to a story in the first person, present tense! For those who read my March 2nd rant on the overused combination of the first person and present tense in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, you'll be interested to read how much I enjoyed the offending combination as used by Tatyana Tolstaya in her literary short story, "See the Other Side." Since the story was published in The New Yorker, you can read and enjoy it online for free here.

So, first person, present tense in The New Yorker is cool, but I throw a fit when I read it in F&SF? My complaint with F&SF is that they're printing too many (at times exclusively) of this type of story. More specifically, I was pretty upset by how badly M. Rickert's "Memoir of a Deer Woman" used the present tense.

Tolstaya's translated story flows beautifully in the present tense. The protagonist's present tense journey is the frame for a story that goes back decades in time. Memories of actions and emotions in the past are crucial to the plot of the story, and the author's use of present tense for the present time in the story avoids time line confusion. The tense choice gracefully avoids a lot of awkward past perfect tense (past perfect = "he had already written", "she had already called"). The fact that the author is a middle-aged Russian woman and the protagonist is a middle-aged Russian woman makes the choice of the first person, I, natural and genuine. Far from detracting from a lovely story, the use of the first person, present tense made "See the Other Side" more engaging and warm.