the almost right words

A recent book that blew my mind was Andrea Barrett’s collection of stories called Servants of the Map. It was one of those books that, while reading, I could feel burrowing into my writer’s subconscious, re-arranging the wiring for what’s possible and what I want to be able to do in fiction. Here’s some thoughts on Point of View in a story from that collection, ‘The Forest.”

“The Forest” contains an astonishing twenty-four changes in point of view in only twenty-five pages of text. It’s a remarkably fluid and almost basketball like passing of perspectives back and forth between its two main characters, Bianca and Krzysztof. In the story’s early going, the changes in perspective—initially indicated by white space—seem geared to help us witness a party (and its guests), at which our two main characters find themselves, from different perspectives. That it does. Yet, by the story’s end, when Bianca and Krzysztof sneak away from the party and begin sharing details of their pasts, Barrett’s intention for such fluid, frequent (though risky) changes in POV grows more deeply linked to experiencing not just the story’s action from different perspectives, but its profound themes as well.

We open in the POV of aging and well-regarded scientist Krzysztof Wojciechowicz, who has just arrived at an esteemed colleague’s party at which many celebrated scientists are present. Krzysztof feels out of place. So too does Bianca, the young woman who helped chauffer Krzysztof to the party and is bitterly transitioning away from the world of science and academia. In the opening sections, the point of view shifts back and forth between them, trading off every couple pages.

On the micro level, when Krzysztof and Bianca meet, we’re in Krzysztof’s POV where we learn he “could not help noticing that she had lovely breasts.” A few pages later, now in Bianca’s POV and learning how she fits—or decidedly doesn’t fit—into this party dynamic, she stops to consider the strange elder scientist, noting “had it not been for the lizardike graze of his eyes across her chest, she might have felt sorry for him.” It’s a subtle moment—in fact, it could easily be played for comedy in another story—but Barrett seizes on it as a way to develop character and make the most of these new eyes through which we’re seeing the action. What do we learn? Krzysztof, though elderly, still can’t help a peek at a young woman’s chest. He wonders: “How was it he still felt these impulses?” This question raises the stakes of his indiscretion, and the fact of his looking matters even more when we learn that Bianca has not only noticed, but been miffed by the unwanted glance. Without the shifting POV, this moment can’t happen.

Similarly, in the first Krzysztof section, Bianca comes off as brash, agitated, and dismissive of Krzysztof. In the very next section, in Bianca’s POV, she sneaks to an upstairs bedroom and smokes a joint. Directly after this, back in Krzysztof’s POV, he awakes from an accidental nap to find Bianca “cross-legged on the grass, watching over him.” Something’s changed in her; he can feel it. “She seemed happy now; what had he missed?” Krzysztof doesn’t know she’s high, but he doesn’t need to. Here Barrett uses the shifting POV not just for character development and tension, but for dramatic irony as well, and to establish a gradually building closeness between them.

The macro benefits unfold more gradually as Krzysztof and Bianca’s perception of one another becomes more sympathetic and round. More human. For instance, Krzysztof recognizes that Bianca has spirit and he seems intrigued by Bianca’s complex relationship with her sister, Rose. Bianca’s sense of Krzysztof changes even more dramatically when he invites her to share some rare vodka he’s brought from overseas, and, buoyed by his kindness, and several shots of bison vodka, she finds that “…this man, whom at first she’d felt saddled with and longed to escape, was some sort of magician.” Barrett consistently justifies the change in perspective by showing us such powerful and revealing character insights.

Mid-way through the story, as Krzysztof and Bianca grow friendlier, and as their conversation shifts from the party to their pasts, especially their mothers, Barrett stops tipping her hand with white space and begins changing POV both more fluidly and more often. For instance, at one point we are in Krzysztof’s POV and he’s telling Bianca a long story about his mother, who helped keep the bison population alive in Europe, yet in the middle of his story, “Bianca interrupted him—he seemed old again, he was wandering. And crossing and uncrossing his legs like a little boy who had to pee.” When Bianca interrupts, the perspective shifts, yet the action continues without interruption. It’s this seamless story movement that keeps the increasingly shifting POV from growing cumbersome.

And yet, the “head hopping” that Barrett engages in walks a fine line and might, in lesser hands, detract from the story. In The Power of Point of View, Alicia Rasley writes that “the indiscriminate shifting from one character’s POV to another’s” is “like being trapped in a car with a driver who keeps changing lanes every ten seconds.” Good advice for those of us still learning how to use and harness point of view. What keeps this feeling at bay in “The Forest” though is both Barrett’s control and purpose for the shifting POV, and also the fact that she only shifts between two characters. If she changed perspectives as frequently with, say, four or five characters, or across more settings, the effect might be whiplash and harder to sustain or justify.

In the end, the characters end up witnessing the same climactic moment—a cluster of deer who come each day to feed in a patch of nearby forest—but end up focused on different things. Her time with Krzysztof has sent Bianca thinking of her mother and of the complex relationship she has with her sister. Krzysztof, though clearly affected by remembrances of his mother and the early part of his life, still seems more physically in the present. On their way back to the party, Krzysztof invites small talk and Bianca asks him about the bison his mother helped protect. “How pleasing that after all she’d paid attention to his stories,” he thinks. Though affected by the deer and his thoughts, he’s still very aware of this lovely young girl he’s ended up sharing the afternoon with.

Their connection to their past, and to their mothers, informs why they end up connecting in the present. Barrett’s shifting POV makes the context of their relationship richer and more deeply felt. It also helps deepen one of the story’s central themes, the sense of longing for and deep consideration of a past that has influenced the present. The story takes a darkly comic turn when Krzysztof hurts himself on their brief sojourn and Bianca has to bring him back to the party with braces on his legs. Rather than face the music, though, Bianca peels out of the driveway with the esteemed guests looking on, incredulous and worried. And yet, this ends up being a profound shared moment. “Back, Krzysztof thought” as they’re driving away, “back across the ocean and Europe toward home; back to the groves of Bialowieza, where his mother might once have crossed paths with Bianca’s grandfather.” In this moment for him, their lives have become joined both in the present drama and in the lingering past, uniting them more deeply. And yet, Barrett gives us one final shift in POV to show the ways in which their shared experience has affected them differently. “He thought back but Bianca, her foot heavy on the accelerator, thought away. From Rose, their mother, their entire past.”

It’s rather amazing what Barrett achieves in “The Forest.” On first reading, I felt aware of frequent shifts in POV and was impressed at how seamless it felt. On closer examination, finding just how often she changes POV and what she’s able to achieve as a result—just the simple fact that she pulls it off—I feel excited to explore how shifts in POV can deepen and broaden my own stories.