Can Anyone Explain the Curious Word Choices for This Popular Novel?

If you know the book, speak up

A modern bestselling novel (copyright 2013) written in first person uses the pronoun I in a noticeable and unusual way, unusual at least for a bestselling author.

Most experienced fiction writers try to vary the starts of sentences and paragraphs, yet we have the opposite in several sections of this novel.

CHAPTER ONE: Five consecutive paragraphs start with the pronoun I, six if you count I’m.

CHAPTER FIVE: In four pages of only twenty-three paragraphs of modest length, fifteen paragraphs begin with the pronoun I. (For the statisticians out there, that’s 65 percent.)

CHAPTER TEN: Nine of the first ten paragraphs begin with I. (That’s 90 percent.)

It’s difficult to explain this on many levels.

Am I the first reader to notice this repetitive embrace of the first person pronoun? Doubtful.

Did the author or his editors not notice? Doubtful.

Did the author or his editors not care? Apparently.

So, what fiction writers are advised not to do seems quite acceptable in the hands of a big-name writer and publisher. Make of that what you will.

Now for the good part. The first reader to identify this bestselling novel in a comment here will win a FREE short story from my backlist. The story runs about eight thousand juicy words, and you can get it in a popular ebook format.

If you’ve ever commuted to work on a train or bus, here’s a one-minute short story that could make you wonder what your fellow passengers have in mind.