Reflection: A Novel, with Critical Component

Abstract

Reflection is a novel which examines Margot Saunders’s life from her childhood to a time when she believes herself to be the victim of sexual assault, through her discovery that the assault never happened – it was a misconstrual of events and facts – and onward to her finding a certain peace with which to go on into the future. The novel covers the time period from 1979 to 2023, and is set in France and various locations in the UK. The critical commentary, divided into three parts, analyses firstly the conception of the novel (from disquiet at the adamance of the ‘Believe Her’ movement which left no space for misunderstanding, memory lapses or human error) and themes of feminism and social conditioning and how these have affected women and girls throughout the decades and various waves of feminist action. The second chapter sets Reflection alongside seven contemporary novels and compares and contrasts the various technical and structural methods used by the four various authors. This chapter discusses three of Ian McEwan’s works: Atonement (2001), On Chesil Beach (2007), and Lessons (2022), as well as Kate Reed Petty’s True Story (2020), The Reader (1997) by Bernhard Schlink, J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country (1976), and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992). The third and final chapter looks at the writing process: choices as to structure, voicing, and narrative techniques employed in the writing of Reflection.