Characteristics of Martin's Writing Style by KItty Fitzgerald
Over descriptive in certain scenes and some events to emphasise something that Manon is dwelling on in her mind or to convey her absent thought at a particular moment in the novel.
Undescriptive of appearances and feelings, both of herself and of others. EFFECTS: the author doesn’t want you to feel attached to any of the characters, she wants the reader to see them all with certain distance. This helps to convey the emotional absence in the overall novel. The reader feels Manon’s frustration and miserableness through sudden hints given by Martin in her flawless writing. It would compromise Manon’s personality to make her wingy and pitiful. Instead, we see how she feels, without her saying it. An example of a subtle persuasion the author has on the reader can be found in the scene where Joel is first introduced: ‘what a strange effect the sight of him had upon me’. Manon never once describes that feeling, however the reader does feel Manon’s longing and desire, which is impressively conveyed through Martin’s careful writing decisions.
The writing has a sense of fluency, but not order. This is because it is all in Manon’s head and her train of thought may sometimes not be orderly. Martin comes in and out of scenes, without any proper entry or exit, and ‘bobs’ are used to mark when there is a change in scene or time. The effect this has is that there is no proper sense of time, however we do feel a drag at some points, especially when Manon is in the plantation, annoyed with her life. However time speeds up when she is in the cottage, which shows how much she prefers her solitude. Martin once again, does not need to put it in words for us to feel uncomfortable in the plantation, the reader feels this due to the long days or short day with irrelevant happenings.
Martin’s writing is very peculiar in the sense we know how certain characters speak and act, without her actually telling us. The whole novel is like that ‘It tells you so much without telling you too much’.