h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In a novel, you sometimes get a first person narrator who is an outsider, or has a different perspective on society. A child, like Scout in 'To Kill a Mocking Bird', a lesbian in Victorian England, like Nan in 'Tipping the Velvet'.

But such narrators can be unreliable. Have you read 'Engleby'?

In third person narratives, in some ways, there is a kind of ghostly narrator who can step back a bit. Maybe you don't need an outsider in the same way.

Good thought. I don't know 'Engleby'. Who wrote it?

Sebastian Faulks, who's probably better known for 'Birdsong' and 'Charlotte Gray'.

I thought it a brilliant character study, and a clever satire of the seventies and eighties, but as a mystery it's a bit obvious...

Interesting. I only know 'Charlotte Gray' as a film, I think. Wasn't that about World War II?

I've read 'Birdsong' but not 'Charlotte Gray'. But, I've heard that it follows a young woman who gets involved in the French resistance.

That was the one. Not a bad film.