investigating (while his own dead son is also called Peter). Through these
kinds of doublings, ‘City of Glass’ plays with a lack of differentiation
between authors, readers, writers and characters.
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled (1996) there is also a merging of
characters. Some of the characters appear first in one role and then
another. For example, Gustav, the hotel porter, also seems to be the father-
in-law of Ryder the central character. The characters exist in their own
right, but are also projections of Ryder’s consciousness and memory: they
deliver lengthy monologues distinct from most day-to-day conversational
interactions. Characters and events in the novel double up: for example,
the young pianist Stephan’s anxieties about his parents’ attitude towards
him seem to mirror Ryder’s own. Again this suggests character identifica-
tion and overlap rather than differentiation.
In order to create a set of loosely differentiated characters, devise a char-
acter whose identity transforms into two other characters. You could, for
example, try to create a trio of characters who are reader, author, character;
daughter, mother, grandmother; or murderer, victim, detective. If you like,
you can make their names line up with each other (perhaps they all have
names which begin with the same letter and seem related). My text ‘Secret
Places’ which can found in Chapter 12 (Figure 12.1, p. 272), is an example
of such an approach. Here the ‘characters’ have the names Cass, Cathy and
Casuarina, and can be conceived of as both the same and different people.
In another piece called ‘Viola’s Quilt’, (Smith 2000b, pp. 14–17), I used the
names Viola, Violet and Varvara for a similar triumvirate.
You can make the characters seem similar through physical or mental
characteristics, through their professions or interests, or through their
habits. They might be earlier or later versions of the same person, pro-
jected into different geographical spaces or historical eras. Whichever way
you approach this, you will need to find a way of linking them through
similarities as well as differences. In each case you will want to create some
ambiguity about whether this is a similar or a different person, the degree
of ambiguity (small or large) is up to you.
You can undertake Exercise 2a on a very simple level initially, and then
build it up in a more complex way. You can introduce larger numbers of char-
acters if you wish. Or lack of differentiation can be extended to objects and
events as well as characters, so that it infiltrates all aspects of the narrative.
One-trait characters
A postmodern character may be one-dimensional, and characterised by
a particular, all-pervasive trait, rather than (like the rounded character) a
mixture of traits (see Exercise 2b). In the context of realist fiction such
Postmodern f(r)ictions 141