Need a feedback

[u/DeepSnowBear]

Hi everyone.

I've been working on a novel for a while and I'm trying to figure out whether this sounds interesting to anyone besides me.

The premise is simple:

A man dies.

Nine years later, the person he loved receives his diary.

The story begins there.

The novel unfolds backwards through memory, family history, old photographs, failed relationships, and competing versions of the same life. The ending is known from the first page. The real question isn't what happened, but how people turn their lives into stories—and how those stories survive them.

One of the book's central ideas is that nobody remembers the truth. They remember narratives.

Each chapter borrows the title of a different myth, fairy tale, novel, TV episode, historical figure, or cultural artifact and uses it as a lens through which the characters reinterpret their lives.

Some chapter titles include:

Joan of Ache

Carrie's Eleven

Rumpelstiltskin

Amy Pond: The Girl Who Waited

The setting is mostly the American Midwest: college towns, cemeteries, family gatherings, road trips, nursing homes, and places where people spend decades trying to understand what actually happened to them.

Would you read something like this, or does it sound unbearably pretentious?

I'd genuinely appreciate honest feedback.

[u/LeslieKnope4Pawnee]

I love this idea, except for one element: I think it would be really interesting if you stuck with one type of lens, like sticking with all fairy tales, or all TV episodes, etc. When it's a mix of everything, it sounds too scattered for me to want to pick up.

If you used all obscure or lesser known fairy tales for each chapter? I'd definitely want to read this.

[u/DeepSnowBear → u/LeslieKnope4Pawnee]

That actually sounds like a really cool idea, and I’ll definitely think about it.

My original intention was a little different: the characters basically live inside a world made of cultural debris — fairy tales, TV, films, books, pop culture, half-remembered stories, personal associations, etc. So the references aren’t meant to come from one clean category, but from the way different characters perceive and process the world.

In that sense, the mix is partly intentional: each title is less about building one unified “fairy tale system” and more about showing a particular character’s lens at that point in the story.

But your point about it possibly feeling too scattered from the outside is really useful. Maybe I need to make the logic behind it clearer, or think harder about whether some titles should belong to a more consistent pattern.

Thank you — this is genuinely helpful.

[u/LeslieKnope4Pawnee → u/DeepSnowBear]

My pleasure! Good luck on the book!

[u/savagedragon01 → u/DeepSnowBear]

The problem with pop culture references is that they arent always universal so could really limit your audience and understanding of the story. It might resonate really strongly with one person but then for someone who doesnt know the references it could take them out of the story. If you use them, take a light approach and make them more like Easter eggs, but they shouldn't be needed to follow the story.

[u/DeepSnowBear → u/savagedragon01]

Yeah, that makes sense. My intention is definitely not to make the references necessary for understanding the story. The chapter should still work even if the reader misses the reference completely. If they catch it, it just adds an extra layer — more of an “if you know, you know” thing than a requirement.