A Change of Scene

             Upon reading the last half of the novel, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, a variety of things intrigued me, from parallels to transfers of characters.
            
              First of all, I felt that the second half of the novel was much easier to get into, therefore enjoying it substantially more than the first half. However, I felt that reading the first half, especially the beginning, and truly grasping a feel for the writing style was essential to reading the second half of the novel. I almost saw the midway point as a new beginning for a few reasons.
             
                At the beginning of reading the second half of the book, I saw a recurring theme of the bookstore, where the narrator is telling “you” about what “you” like to read, and the importance of that. In the seventh chapter, the narrator is in Ludwilla’s home, and looking at her bookshelf, surveying her books, and making assumptions and conclusions about her based on them. “Let’s have a look at the books… books read and rarely reread, or books you have not or will not read but have still retained” (145-146), is a parallel to the first chapter where the narrator talks about “Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages, the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success…” (5). I saw this as important to the novel because it shifted to Ludwilla’s character, at least as I perceived it, giving insight on her character and not just “you.”
               
                  However, it seemed to me to have a transfer of character, as far as the term “you” was concerned. In the beginning, “you” appeared to be the guy that is pursuing the manuscript interest with Ludmilla. But starting in chapter 7, where the books are belonging to Ludmilla, stacked on her shelves, the narrator seems to be addressing her as “you,” by making claims to her character based on her selection of books, and using the pronoun to represent Ludmilla, rather than focusing on the man.
              
                   After this change in character, the narrator seemed to shy away from the use of “you,” giving proper names like “Reader” and “Other Reader” to define and name the man and Ludwilla’s characters. I thought this switch in what felt to be the 2nd person writing to the 3rd person as far as “Reader” and “Other Reader” were now concerned spiced up the introductory chapter to the story, In a Network of Lines that Intersect, throwing my prior interpretation of the novel off guard, ultimately making it more interesting to read.  It was definitely one of the oddest and most challenging books I’ve ever read, but it helped to open my mind to different types of writing and voice styles.