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How Novels Work, by John Mullan
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Drawing on his weekly Guardian column, "Elements of Fiction," John Mullan offers an engaging look at the novel, focusing mostly on works of the last ten years as he illuminates the rich resources of novelistic technique.
Mullan sheds light on some of the true masterworks of contemporary fiction, including Monica Ali's Brick Lane, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Patricia Highsmith's Ripley under Ground, Ian McEwan's Atonement, John le Carr�'s The Constant Gardener, Philip Roth's The Human Stain, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, and Zadie Smith's White Teeth. He highlights how these acclaimed authors use some of the basic elements of fiction. Some topics (like plot, dialogue, or location) will appear familiar to most novel readers, while others (meta-narrative, prolepsis, amplification) will open readers' eyes to new ways of understanding and appreciating the writer's craft. Mullan also excels at comparing modern and classic authors--Nick Hornby's adoption of a female narrator is compared to Daniel Defoe's; Ian McEwan's use of weather is set against Austen's and Hardy's.
How Novels Work explains how the pleasures of novel reading often come from the formal ingenuity of the novelist, making visible techniques and effects we are often only half-aware of as we read. It is an entertaining and stimulating volume that will captivate anyone who is interested in the contemporary or the classical novel.
- Sales Rank: #159826 in Books
- Published on: 2008-04-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.00" h x .90" w x 7.60" l, .65 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Based on Mullan's weekly "Elements of Fiction" column from UK's The Guardian, this volume intelligently dismantles a hefty stack of beloved novels to find out what makes them tick. Mullan is interested in fiction that most resonates with contemporary audiences-the books that readers remember and are eager to share and discuss-and, consequently, a number of book-club favorites turn up here, including Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. Moving with critical dexterity from Martin Amis to Richard Yates to Virginia Woolf to a small library of other well-known authors, Mullan's methods-which are, in effect, to claw at the ineffable qualities of modern-day classics until some concrete observations emerge-are consistently readable and relevant, illuminating well each chapter's topic (Genre, Voices, Structure, Detail and Style among them). Although Mullan notes in the introduction that he revised, rearranged, and rewrote the columns extensively, the book retains-to its benefit-a serial, journalistic feel, moving the ambitious project from topic to topic and book to book at a pace that allows for real mechanical investigation but bars stalling.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Review from previous edition
"Expanding on his popular Guardian column, and focusing on a set of key novels, How Novels Work [mullan] aims to explain to the interested 'non-academic' reader critical approaches, particularly 'matters of form', which are normally considered the perserve of academia...the text is rich in critical and literary-historical insights...critical readings which...[are], above all, communicated in plain English."--Beth Lynch, Times Literary Supplement
"Ever insightful critiques...wholly satisfying, and a great education for book-lovers and would-be novelists alike... Mullan is willing to go where other academics do not usually deign to tread."--Susan Elderkin, The Financial Times
"A wealth of sharp mini-essays."--The Guardian
About the Author
John Mullan is Professor of English at University College London. He is the author of Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century and co-editor of Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: An Anthology. A broadcaster and journalist as well as an academic, he writes a weekly column on contemporary fiction for the Guardian.
Most helpful customer reviews
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
A Wonderful Introduction to Literary Criticism
By Thistle's Guardian
I've only written one other Amazon review, but I thought that the 1 star rating was grossly unjust, so here I go!
Mullan introduces literary criticism by actually analysing various new and classic novels. He never `talks down' to the reader, but he also assumes you have no background in literary criticism (i.e.-me!). I feel like I learned as much from reading this book as I would have from an intro college class.
The book is arranged by theme. The chapters are: beginning, narrating, people, genre, voices, structure, detail, style, devices, literariness, and ending. That pretty much sums up what you're going to learn about. Mullan has a nice, structured style: the beginning of every chapter summarises his points and outlines what books we're going to look at and what details we're going to find. He keeps the digs at contemporary authors to a minimum, despite his obvious membership in `literary circles,' which is refreshing. I've probably read about half of the books he analysed (and when I read this, I was a twenty-year-old American who had never taken an English class); for those that I hadn't read, he gives enough background that I don't feel like I'm missing out. He does a pretty good job about avoiding spoilers until the last chapter, which discusses novels' endings. Fortunately, I had read most of the books in this chapter, but there was one part where I had to actually shut my eyes and turn the page so that a novel I've been meaning to read wasn't ruined!
I'm very grateful to Mullan for providing me the tools to analyse the books that I read in a more detailed and organised manner. For anyone out there who is intelligent and curious about literary criticism, but doesn't have any kind of background in it, this book is a godsend. It's also just great to read a book by someone who obviously loves reading and loves fiction.Sometimes, it seems like fiction is still judged as `lesser' than non-fiction; Mulland truly shows its power. Highly, highly recommended.
I'll end with one of my favourite quotes from the book: "The Novel is a genre that would have us believe that its characters might have a life beyond its pages."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
How Novels Work
By Damaskcat
The author writes in an entertaining style as he explains the various components which make up novels with copious examples from fiction ancient and modern. It is the literary equivalent of a Haynes car manual for layman. For those people who felt that deconstructing a novel for months on end when they were at school destroyed the pleasure in reading, this book demonstrates how understanding the nuts and bolt of fiction can increase enjoyment.
`How Novels Work' covers such subjects as people, genre, voices, style and devices. The author looks at modern novels by such authors as Ali Smith, Nick Hornby and Graham Swift as well as classic authors such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Samuel Richardson. For me he helped to shed some light on the incomprehensible prose in James Joyce's `Ulysses' and reminded me why I enjoyed reading A S Byatt's `Possession'.
Whether you are looking for a clear exposition of the reasons for epistolary fiction or an explanation of why endings can be vague or clear cut then this might be the book for you. It might also help to remind people that Charles Dickens and Jane Austen can be read for pleasure and not just for the purposes of passing exams.
There is a useful bibliography at the end of the book, notes on each chapter and an index. The e-book edition I read also has an active table of contents and the notes are easily accessible from their place in the text.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
How Novels Work by John Mullen
By SaraT
This book's stated purpose is to help readers better understand current novels. I found it helpful as a reader and a novelist. It certainly expanded my writer's vocabulary.
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