A painter goes blind

I was once given a poetry lesson by Kingsley Amis during which he said of unintentional rhymes and assonances in blank verse, ‘Never make the reader pause without profit.’ In The Model by Lars Saabye Christensen, the profitless pause count was wearyingly high. On page 3 and 4 the central character, Peter Wihl’s wife, is called Hélène, then on pages 5, 6, and 7 she is called Helena, then reverts to Hélène for the rest of the book. Why? In the first few pages Peter is in the garden with his daughter while it gets dark. Some time later Peter is painting in his studio when he notices that it is getting dark. This sort of thing keeps happening. Sometimes Christensen surprises us by coming up with the explanation, but all this undermines our willing suspension of disbelief, which he can ill afford, and there are scenes which tax our credulity to the limit — or in my case beyond.