Earlier this month, Philip Pullman went on a cranky Twitter rant that made me wonder if he too was reading the new Maggie O’Farrell novel. “I don’t care how many people enjoy it, fiction in the present tense is an ABDICATION OF NARRATIVE RESPONSIBILITY,” he tweeted. “I resent having to re-calibrate my entire attitude to time whenever I open a novel in the present tense. Away with them!”
The Marriage Portrait, like O’Farrell’s 2020 runaway bestseller, Hamnet, is written in a lavish if rather solemn present tense that tries to bring the past to life: “The two girls grip each other by the arms. The maid is trembling, a hand held to her chest, as if to still her heart. The scream comes again, louder this time, and with words attached: ‘No, no, no!’” It’s Pullman tearing his hair out!
