The events were happening now, in the present tense, unfolding as I watched, and what followed would be filtered through the main character’s sensibility. He seemed to be occupying the same physical space as me, with a slight ghostly overlap. It didn’t make sense to call him “Cromwell,” as if he were somewhere across the room. I called him “he.”

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 1140