(no subject)

[winterbadger]

Reading a SciF/Fantasy book review, I came across this passage.

I think what gets me so about moments like this is how they involve self-realization. A paradigm shift, however slight (or major), where the characters are forced to confront something scary/extraordinary/beyond the normal, not about the world around them but about themselves.

It’s a literary trope that does exist outside the sf genre, but it’s much harder to find, and in my mind at least is rarely as viscerally satisfying.

Is it just me, or do others feel this betrays the reviewer's astounding lack of familiarity with much of mainstream literature? It seems as if just this sort of self-realisation is a terrifically common part of modern fiction, from Charles Dickens to JD Salinger to Jhumpa Lahiri.