I read this paragraph in a book review for a book I was looking into today on Amazon:
Dead is the new pink. The formerly living occupy a huge amount of creative space these days -- in television ("Ghost Whisperer," "Medium"), film ("Corpse Bride," "Just Like Heaven"), novels like Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, even a highly regarded show of spirit photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
In literature I've even heard someone refer to this as a subgenre entitled "Dead-Narrator Tales". Woa. This concept is especially prevalent in YA lit and as I have a YA lit class this semester I've already read a few.
YA lit is notorious for stretching boundaries and defying limits, sometimes obnoxiously. I feel like sometimes the author's primary question is 'How can I create a story so niche oriented, so diverse in it's plot and characters, so 'off the charts' that teens everywhere will buy it and come to proms held in its honor?' (don't get me wrong, I loved Twilight and Stephanie Meyer's ascent to fame was much more innocent than I'm suggesting) I know! A paraplegic Vegan who secretly raises unicorns that have special powers over the stock market! Yeah, and she suffers from a sex addiction, but can't tell her Meth attic Mom!
This dead narrator thing, however, is a clever new twist. I think I kind of like it. But by this time next year I'm sure I'll be "so over it" as they tell me the teens say these days. Just when you think edgy YA lit topic have been tapped out (Drugs? too overdone Sex? too obvious) someone says, "What About Dead People?" Awesome.
