Is there a name for this literary style?

Cafe Society
1

I’m thinking pre-modern or cinematic, but there must be something better.

I’m talking about novels like The Long Ships or Tros of Samothrace where we have lots of character action and movement but none of the inner monologues and psychological insights so popular in more recent fiction.

Basically, books like those two are similar to watching a very straightforward movie. It’s simply story-telling.

So is there a term that describes these kinds of books?

2

You are asking about the *narrator *or narrative voice of the book. In this case it is third-person, because the narrator speaks of “he did this/said that”. According to Wikipedia, you are looking at an *objective *rather than a *subjective *narrator, if the narrator does not describe what the characters think/feel but only what they see/do. Finally, there is the distinction between omniscient and limited; a limited narrator will follow a single character or a small cast, while an omniscient narrator will follow a larger cast.

So, these books have omniscient objective third-person narrators.

3

Ahhh, thank you. :slight_smile: