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How Fiction Works (Hardback)
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- Paperback $12.01
Short Description for How Fiction WorksStudies the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism, and style. This book ois suitable for writers, readers, and those who are interested in what happens on the page.
Full description- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
- Published: 07 February 2008
- Format: Hardback 208 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Literary Studies: General | Literary Studies: Fiction, Novelists & Prose Writers
- ISBN 13: 9780224079839 ISBN 10: 0224079832
- Sales rank: 113,773
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Reviews for How Fiction Works
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Staff review
How Fiction Works
Over the past years in his literary essays for New Republic and The New Yorker (examples of which can be read in two excellent collections: The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief and The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel), James Wood has proved himself to be one of the finest critics of his generation. He is a conscientious and voracious reader who is erudite, insightful, generous, and someone who is a thoroughly readable and enjoyable writer in his own right.
Often seen as old-fashioned for praising realism and books written in his beloved free indirect style, Wood is actually a great populariser who has praised many young writers. In addition, his definition of realism is capacious enough to include many books that might, at first glance, seem quite the opposite. Wood argues for its persistence in art, and thinks realism would really better called lifeness, something that even the most avant-garde novels often have to grapple with.
How Fiction Works is Wood's first full-length book, and is devoted to a discussion of how narrative, detail and characterization all work within the novel. The argument is pitched at quite a basic level, but Wood has a nice turn of phrase and uses his examples well. The book heats up a little towards the end -- Truth, Convention, Realism is the key chapter -- when Wood shows himself to be less dyed-in-the-wool and conservative than he is often accused of being. Wood sticks close to the commonly used critical lexicon throughout and elucidates it wonderfully well. He certainly exclaims a little too often and sometimes confuses approbation with attentiveness, and some of his readers might have wished for a more ambitious book, but How Fiction Works is a highly recommended crib that does what it does very well indeed.
by Mark Thwaite
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