ABSTRACT

Unravelling Oliver, which could also entitle the decline of Oliver, contains a progressive idea, one that is underpinned by the unravelling and dismantling of Oliver's entire personality beneath the narrative blows of memory, story and testimonies. As the title says, the protagonist is apparently Oliver. The story unfolds through alternate voices of people who have known him and through Oliver himself, through the skilful narrative tool of making the characters talk. They enter and exit the scene as if on stage, each to testify his truth and his memory, until the final "confession" of Oliver himself fits the parts of the jigsaw back together. It is a narration in reverse, which could almost define as psychoanalytic discourse, unwinding through the voices of different I-narrators until a final après coup that reveals as much the "mystery" or the guilty person as the intimate essence of a man, Oliver.