The time of the novel 

In the novel, a genre that I particularly like (but is there still a novel genre?), the time of the story is the simple past. "We left five hundred and by a prompt reinforcement, we saw three thousand arriving at the port." The present tense of narration is only used on rare occasions, writing in the first person as well. These processes are sometimes used to give realism to the story. “Beneath me therefore, this troop advances”. They are therefore not systematic and do not respond to ease of language but, on the contrary, enrich its complexity. In the novel, the author must step aside for the benefit of his characters, which does not prevent him, through their choice and their construction, from letting his thoughts appear. It is only suggested and it is up to the reader to guess. Today, most contemporary works are autobiographical or even psychoanalytic. We cannot speak of novels but of testimonies or essays depending on whether it is a real-life story or a set of reflections on humankind. The true novel is only found in thrillers or SF works. Moreover, Balzac and Zola, two great novelists of the past, would easily find their bearings in a novel by Chase or Simenon. As for Jules Vernes, Stevenson and Maurice Blanc, they gave the romantic style its letters of nobility and revived a genre that dates from the Middle Ages (The Fox Novel).