Books written in second-person

Cafe Society
1

There have gotta be some books written in second-person, but I’ve never encountered one. Have you?

2

Choose Your Own Adventures and the like.

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Jay MacInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City.

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Writing in Second Person: Atwood to Tolstoy

Books listed include:

Googling for books written in second person lists many more of them. And there must be hundreds of shorter works.

5

Parts of Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler.

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Aren’t most cookbooks written in second person?

7

I remarked on one just about a year ago, Sorry by the Croatian-German author Zoran Drvenkar. About a group of people who get the idea to start a business apologizing for things – people hire them to seek forgiveness for wrongs they have done. “You” are a murderer and you are their newest client.

8

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins is written in the second person. I was a fan of his at the time, but that book taught me I’m not a fan of second person novels.

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My first thought, as well :smiley:

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Aura, by Carlos Fuentes (contains spoilers). I had to read it for high school. Short read, but very interesting.

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Parts of Ian Bank’s Complicity - and very effectively I thought.

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C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters

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The Night Circus has 2nd person portions, along with the more usual 3rd.

I loved this book out of all reasonable bounds. I’m still not entirely sure why. But this is the fourth time it’s come up in two days. Maybe a reread is in order…

14

“Don’t Forgot!” by Elizabeth Darbee Wedge. Memoir of a family that adopted an Eastern European child with mental health issues. It was a hardcover that resided on my grandmother’s bookshelf for years and now resides on mine. It’ s a very odd style to read. (“You were so angry when you came to live with us . . .”) IIRC, there is first person as well where the mother refers to herself (“I told Dad that you . . .”).

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The first one I ever ran into was this one, given to me when I was 7 or thereabouts.

ETA: Oh yeah, and future tense as well :slight_smile:

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Charles Stross’ “Halting State” and its sequel “Rule 34”

Also Bob Leman’s creepy short story “Instructions”

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Oh, that reminds me of this one! The perennial graduation gift, also second person and future tense.

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A Pagan Place, Edna O’Brien, is written wholly in second person: You did this, you said that, you went the other place. It’s plainly meant to be the idiomatic “everybody” you, although not even in Ireland could *every *young woman have had to deal with young priests’ repressed sexuality and premature ejaculation and it was based on her own youth.

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It’s somewhat off-topic, but I loathe erotica written in second person. Usually, it’s something some misguided person wrote to a (presumably creeped-out) potential sex partner, and trying to re-purpose it for a wider audience. Erotica authors, stick to first person or third. Never second.

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Also from Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!.