This is a really wonderful guide to second person plural future tense! I first came across it reading 'The Glassblower's Breath' by Sunetra Gupta, which I find astonishing. There's an extract from it on her webpage, which, is more focused on you-singular, switching to I and me sometimes:
"You think perhaps you will leave me now, that it is time to call a halt to this charade, that our passion is resinate, and our tenderness yellowed, the most unoriginal sin has become yours, that most harmless decrepitude, your lips are stained with the velvet of a younger lust, the acid of an immature wine, how it tingles beneath your foretongue, my beloved, if you leave me tonight, what will you remember later of our love? "
She's also explained why:
The main character in this novel does not have a name and is referred to throughout as "you", a device which did not suggest itself to Sunetra until she was half-way through writing the book.
"I was struggling with the use of the third person for my central character to whom I did not feel it was right to give a name. Using the second person suggested itself to me as the solution. It’s not a contrivance. It plays a cohesive and structural role in this novel with its many characters, events and ideas."
Thanks for introducing me to Lucy Caldwell's story too. I grew up outside Belfast; nice to see it's changing!
Will check them out. Thank you!
This is a really wonderful guide to second person plural future tense! I first came across it reading 'The Glassblower's Breath' by Sunetra Gupta, which I find astonishing. There's an extract from it on her webpage, which, is more focused on you-singular, switching to I and me sometimes:
"You think perhaps you will leave me now, that it is time to call a halt to this charade, that our passion is resinate, and our tenderness yellowed, the most unoriginal sin has become yours, that most harmless decrepitude, your lips are stained with the velvet of a younger lust, the acid of an immature wine, how it tingles beneath your foretongue, my beloved, if you leave me tonight, what will you remember later of our love? "
She's also explained why:
The main character in this novel does not have a name and is referred to throughout as "you", a device which did not suggest itself to Sunetra until she was half-way through writing the book.
"I was struggling with the use of the third person for my central character to whom I did not feel it was right to give a name. Using the second person suggested itself to me as the solution. It’s not a contrivance. It plays a cohesive and structural role in this novel with its many characters, events and ideas."
Thanks for introducing me to Lucy Caldwell's story too. I grew up outside Belfast; nice to see it's changing!