Postmodernism is a nebulous term used to define a wide-range of artistic disciplines.

Though postmodernism is a highly debated term there are certain generally agreed upon characteristics. Postmodernism focuses on the way people interpret and understand reality. Postmodernism rejects the idea of one or two correct interpretations of an event or piece of art; instead it focuses on ambiguities and grey area. Postmodernism emphasizes skepticism and rejects binary assumptions of social constructs like gender, sexuality, class and race. These ideas influence postmodern literature. Many postmodern authors reject the idea of the novel, in its classic sense, as the primary vessel of artistic expression. Ironically, many postmodern authors have found the best medium to eschew the novel is through the novel. These authors use myriad techniques to disengage the reader with the diegesis of the story and focus on the novels verisimilitude to the real world. To create this hyperawareness in the reader, postmodern authors use myriad techniques. Metafiction is a technique that draws the readers attention to the act of storytelling and writing. Metafiction focuses on the act of writing and acknowledges the book as a piece of writing in a continuum of other writings that exist alongside it in the real world. With metafiction authors will often break the fourth wall of literature and directly address the reader. This is used to make the reader always acknowledge that they are reading a piece of fiction. Multiple narrators are also employed in metafiction. With multiple narrators; multiple, differing viewpoints of the same events are given. This is used to bolster the idea, in postmodernism, that there can be multiple correct interpretations of events or objects. In postmodern writing authors acknowledge every aspect of the novels realitythe novels place in the continuum of literature and the novel as a function of the world it inhabits. Postmodernism literature does this through its incorporation of brand names and use of intertextuality. Though these characteristics are not endemic of postmodern literature alone, they are used in postmodern literature to make the reader aware, once more, that they are reading a piece of fiction. The aim of postmodern authors is to create a highly skeptical reader, a reader that questions the assumptions of a binary realityboth in the text and real life. The reader should be paranoid about the truth of the narrative and the reliability of the author. This is what makes Jonathan Coes The Winshaw Legacy an apt paradigm of the postmodern novel. On the first page of the book the narrator breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging the reader and the existence of the book and asserts that he is an unreliable narrator: It is a curious irony that this same Tabitha Winshaw, today aged eighty-one and no more in possession of her thinking faculties than she has been for the last forty-five years, should be the patron and sponsor of the book which you, my friendly readers, now hold in your hands. The task of writing with any objectivity about her condition becomes somewhat problematic. This caveat frames the action in the rest of the book. The reader is immediately skeptical of all characterizations of Tabitha and the reader must be wary that the narrator has a vested interest in the story, which causes him to be subjective. From the onset we are warned that the story has no objective truth. Throughout the story the narrator, Michael Owen, becomes less of an objective narrator and more of a central character, ineluctably mired within drama. Michael continues to question, throughout the story, his ability to be objective since he has come to hate the characters he was paid to write about. Intertextuality, also, plays a large part in shaping the novel. Title of novel (What a Carve Up) comes directly from a 1961 British, comedic movie. This movie is a recurring theme throughout the book. Michael Owens childhood is shaped by this movie, specifically a scene in the movie he fetishizes and watches over and overan exchange between Kenneth Connor and Shirley Eaton. This scene is woven throughout the story; to the extent the reader becomes skeptical whether this is reality or the result of the subjectivity of Michael Owen. The ending of the novel is very characteristic of postmodern literature. The ending is ambiguous and creates a paranoid reader. In the end Tabitha Winshaw purposely crashes the plane with Michael

Owen inside, presumably killing them both. Immediately before this the reader is lead to believe that Tabitha was not crazy. She was the only one that knew the truth. Then her sanity is contradicted by her final act of crashing the plane. This ending also creates a huge paradox: the narrator writes his own death. This is obviously not possible so the reader must accept an alternate reality for the book to make sense. Either Michael Owen didnt write the whole book or he didnt die. Either way the reader is paranoid and skeptical. This is what makes the book a great postmodern novel.