What is the author's style in the novel, The Only Story?

The novel’s prose generally focuses on evoking the many contradictions contained within the concept of love, including both the fulfillment and suffering of which love is generally a locus. For example, when Paul is narrating the first year or two of his relationship with Susan, he highlights the many ways in which he found Susan completely fulfilling. For example, Paul viewed his love for Susan as “incorruptible, proof against time and tarnish” (61). However, later in the relationship, deeper challenges and complications arose. Eventually, Paul makes the difficult decision to end his association with Susan, whose mental lucidity had all but vanished. The narration states the struggles and contradictions of this decision: “He couldn't save her, and so he had to save himself, It was as simple as that. No, of course it wasn’t; it was much more complicated. He could have gone on, both fooling and torturing himself” (207).

The novel also often uses its prose as a means of directly meditating on these contradictions and ambiguities of love. For example, the novel opens with Paul declaring that it is impossible to control how much one loves in their lifetime. Throughout the narrative and throughout Paul’s life, Paul continues these meditations on the nature of love, and he eventually arrives at the paradoxical understanding that love can never be understood. As a corollary, he also concludes that “In love, everything is both true and false it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd.” (220).