Choosing the right narrative tense for your novel is crucial. The following are the two most helpful books I've found on understanding and choosing narrative tense: (1) Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft and (2) Joan Silber's The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes. I've written detailed notes on what I've learned from these books and from the writing workshops I've taken over the years, which you can download as a pdf below.