The Perspectives Of Kelly Stuart's 'The New'

The Perspectives of “The New New” The perspective of a story can and will drastically affect what a reader perceives and believes about a tale. A book’s perspective serves as a window, from which the reader looks through to view the fictional world beyond. Kelly Stuart’s “The New New” has several characters who are led to believe different things based on their perspective. Stuart takes this idea a step further, and using the book’s limited third person narrative, Stuart pulls the reader to believe certain things without evidence. At the publishing company, the characters believe that Jimmy, the author of the book they’re publishing, murdered Jeremy, a “monster”, despite only being told of the killing. However, Jeremy’s sister Naomi, believes

Naomi knew her brother far better than anyone else in the story did. She writes:

My brother’s name was Jeremy. Not Monster. He was five foot three, one hundred thirty pounds. Not six foot two, three hundred and fifty. My brother was tortured and strangled over the course of a two-hour, period. The shape of a turtle and a steer were imprinted on my brother’s neck, from the cowboy belt your so-called “author” used. My brother’s face was badly beaten, bones protruded from his bloody face. My brother was a medical assistant. He was a human being, not a monster. (903)

From Naomi’s perspective, a blood thirsty murderer killed her brother and is now going to get rich off a book related to it. Naomi may know her brother better than anyone else, but similarly the story she tells is used to benefit her. She tries to shift people’s perspective in the opposite direction and could be embellishing to achieve this. It is up to the reader to decide whether to believe Jeremy really was tortured and had bones sticking out of his face. The reader is persuaded to believe Naomi since she is more likeable than any of the other characters. However, just because the reader is persuaded to believe Naomi that does not mean that she is right. Naomi may have had her perspective limited by her emotions. Her feelings about her brother and the fact she is grieving puts a major spin on how she sees things. Jeremy may have had secrets that his sister didn’t know about that really made him a monster. Naomi doesn’t have the full story from her perspective even if she thinks that she