Role of New York in Marian Keyes' "Anybody out there"

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Rostock, language: English, abstract: The topic of this paper is the function New York takes in the plot of the novel "Anybody out there" by Marian Keyes. There are many books and novels about New York itself. However, there seems to be a lack of analyses that focus on the question in how far New York can function as a plot driving moment in novels where it is only used as a setting background rather than as a topic itself. The question how the setting influences the plot is a classical one in literary theory and literary criticism: "The author chooses the setting carefully to support the action, characters and narrative perspective" (Klarer 2007). This statement shows that usually there is the suspect that the setting is not chosen by random but that it was decided for and depicted in such way as to bring across the plot in a most effective way. Some scientists go even further and claim that a full account for the understanding of a text taking place in New York is only possible if the reader knows the place of the setting by heart...However, this is usually not possible. Therefore there are many works in cultural studies that conduct research on how cities as New York are represented in literary texts. These findings can then be referred to. Nevertheless the question of city representation has not been often enough combined with the question how the representation of New York influences the plot, especially if it comes to literary texts that are not belonging to the classical canon. Since New York seems to be one of the most interesting towns on earth for many people, it is not surprising that it is also a common setting for many novels, especially in modern 21st century ones. This is also the case in "Anybody out there". In this Novel it sometimes seems that New York, the chosen setting, gains its own character and personality. Thus it is an interesting question to analyze how the representation of the city is integrated with the other characters in the novel and what concepts it is associated with. Of course New York can be depicted in many different ways, since it is a very big town containing many sometimes contrastive characteristics. The question then is which ones are picked up and how they are presented and gathered around the incidents and the characters in the novel.