#12 - Must Be True

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Absolutely KwakuS! Those are great hints to look to as well. The language you note is all about shaping the life and turning the bits and and pieces of a life together into a coherent narrative.

Great work!

[German.Steel]

I'm all aboard for "storytelling," but "novelistic" gave me significant heartburn here. What exactly is the support for "novelistic"? I guess just the idea that telling a story = what novels do? But if that's the case, then isn't it redundant to say "novelistic storytelling"? Thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

Not at all redundant, German.Steel, because stories can be told in many different ways. Epic poems tell stories. So do films. So do comic books. But none of those storytelling structures makes sense in this case, while a novelistic approach does. It's a biography, but it is written in a way that resembles a novel. Nisa's story, in Shostak's hands, is that of a life that has a recognizable shape.

[German.Steel]

That's fair. I guess I still don't see great support for "novelistic" just from the "in the shape of a life" stuff. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it, because the other answers are pretty trash so it wasn't hard to get comfortable with "novelistic storytelling," lol.