Mapping Multiple Voices in B. S. Johnson’s House Mother Normal

The present article is an attempt to analyse House Mother Normal – a littleresearched novel by the British experimental novelist B. S. Johnson. Starting with a general discussion of the author’s literary tenets, the analysis then focuses on the novel at hand, special emphasis being given to the ways in which it maintains continuity with Johnson’s previous works, as well as to the areas in which divergence from the author’s oeuvre is visible. Following these remarks, a question is posed concerning the somewhat complex relationship between the characters and the narrator in the novel, the main problem in this respect being the extent to which the narrator, if indeed present at all, is visible in the text. Finally, the focus of the article shifts to the novel’s multivoicedness, which is then discussed in terms of Bakhtinian notions of polyphony and dialogism. The subsequent analysis of selected excerpts from the novel demonstrates that House Mother Normal for the most part eludes any easy classification and thus subsuming it under Bakhtin’s categories is as seemingly easy as it is problematic and disputable.