The narrative technique of Dolores Claiborne is very postmodern. The entire novel is an unbroken monologue in Dolores's voice as if it were transcribed from an audio tape that recorded only her. There are no switches into thirdperson, no chapter divisions, and no dialogue in the text or other characters, except as she talks of them. While the police presumably ask questions and request clarification, King's readers must reconstruct them solely from Dolores's unbroken talking. Unlike the stream-of-consciousness novel or interior monologue, this is an exterior monologue through which the character literally speaks herself into being, albeit on a printed page. It is this entirely remarkable voice that creates the historical causes and effects, her dilemmas, actions and suffering. It is her voice which stages the presence of others and through which King indirectly accomplishes his social critique.

The narrative logic of this double tale is that to...