Truth and Fiction

The author explores the evasive nature of truth by way of the novel’s intersecting first person narrative accounts. Poor Things is divided into various sections, some of which feature Archie McCandless’s first person narrative, and others of which feature Alasdair Gray’s, Duncan Wedderburn’s, Bella Baxter’s, and Victoria McCandless’s first person narratives. Although these characters are all members of the same fictional world, they vie for control over the truth throughout their stories. In the introduction, for example, the fictional editor, Alasdair Gray, asserts that although Michael Donnelly believes Poor Things is “a blackly humorous fiction,” he sees McCandless’s text as “a loving portrait of an astonishingly . . . eccentric man recorded by a friend” (xiii). The fictional Gray’s editing and publishing work with the text therefore conveys his desire to present the truth of Bella Baxter’s story...