First person narrative

Cover image: Google Books

I'm currently reading Edeet Ravel's A Wall of Light, third book in her "Tel Aviv trilogy". I realize I'm reading the trilogy out of order, having passed over Look for Me. I wasn't sure I was going to continue with the series after I found Ten Thousand Lovers interesting but a little annoying. What was annoying? The fact that it was a first person narrative.

Truth be told, first person narratives turn me off a lot of books. Maybe the constant "I, I, I" of the first person just grates on my nerves. I'm not 100% sure. It may be because everything gets filtered through the protagonist's perspective, which can be very limited. Of course you can still draw your own conclusions about the character and the world around them based on their thoughts, what they say to other people, and their actions in the same way that you would if the story was written in the third person. However, to me, third person narratives feel more objective... broader, more all encompassing. Ultimately it's the protagonist's voice that determines whether I like the book.

I am really enjoying A Wall of Light. A first person narrative, told from the perspective of three different people, in the past (the 1950s and 1980s) and in the present, giving insight into life in Tel Aviv. After reading the back cover, I had certain expectations of how the story would unfold: a deaf woman, a rape, and later a sexual awakening. The protagonist is not at all what I expected but I like her. I like the quirkiness of the characters, the flow of the story, and the commentary on Israel, Israeli's, Palestinians, Jews that came from Europe to Israel... What it's like for real people, through their eyes, and not the eyes of North American media.