With a book I ordered from the library, The Phoenix Pencil Company, I didn't know it had "a novel" on the cover until I received it. And it has the kind of bs I associate with books that have "a novel" on the cover. This is why I prefer genre fiction. Some of it is in the present, some in the past, chapter by chapter. Some of The Phoenix Pencil Company is first person, while the other is second person, mostly of the "As you know, Meng, since you were there" variety.
Why is the author spending so much time writing to the other person about things they already know!?
The writer of the second person parts has Alzheimer's and is trying to get things down before they disappear, but the way it's written keeps hitting me like "As you know." It's the "you." "You said", "you did." If it weren't second person like this, I think it wouldn't keep slapping the back of my head constantly. I can write down my memories and feelings without this. I can't help feeling that a lot of it is this way because we, the reader, need to be informed, and that things would be set down differently if the reader weren't there. Like in a lot of "a novel" books, I'm too conscious of the form because the writer is thrusting it in my face.