Time & Perspective Quote by Rose Tremain

There is a quiet deflation built into Tremain's line: the romantic idea that a novelist eventually "figures it out" is treated as wishful thinking. She frames story not as a mastered technique but as a recurring ordeal, with excitement and difficulty yoked together as inseparable twins. That pairing matters. It resists the common split where inspiration is the glamorous part and labor is the dull part. For Tremain, the thrill is the labor; the difficulty is proof the thing is alive.

The phrase "unfolding of a story" is doing heavy lifting. Unfolding suggests discovery rather than construction, as if the narrative is latent and the writer's job is to tease it open without tearing it. That choice slyly demotes authorial omnipotence. Instead of the novelist as puppet master, we get the novelist as attentive reader of her own emerging material, trying to keep pace with what the book demands.

Then she closes the escape hatches: "each and every novel", "regardless of time and place". This is a preemptive strike against the idea that historical settings are harder, or contemporary ones more intuitive, or that a writer can coast on familiarity. It also hints at Tremain's range across periods: she's signaling that research, atmosphere, and era are not the real crucible. The real test is narrative momentum - getting characters to move with consequence and surprise without forcing them.

Subtextually, it's an ethic. Every book deserves the same level of risk, the same willingness to be stumped. The difficulty isn't a bug in the process; it's the price of refusing to repeat yourself.