A deep, practical anatomy of the novel from 'the strongest ... literary critic we have' (New York Review of Books)
James Wood has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian from 1992 to 1995, and a book critic at the New Republic from 1995 to 2007. He has published a number of books with Cape, including How Fiction Works, which has been translated into thirteen languages.
This compelling essay shows just how deeply, sensitively,
imaginatively and joyfully he reads
*Scotland on Sunday*
There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go
to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't
many book reviewers like James Wood
*Sunday Telegraph*
Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face
*Independent on Sunday*
Enchanting... Witty, concise, and composed with a lovely lightness
of touch
*Economist*
Exceptionally illuminating... brilliantly acute and enticingly
widely read work. It should be compulsory reading for anyone in the
reviewing trade and committed to memory before aspiring writers put
pen to paper. For those who intend to pursue the underrated calling
of reading fiction without wishing to add to its ranks, it will not
only make reading more pleasurable, but articulate what you may
have felt but never been able to express
*Herald*
Wood takes aim at E.M. Forster's longtime standard-bearer Aspects of the Novel in this eminently readable and thought-provoking treatise on the ways, whys and hows of writing and reading fiction. Wood addresses many of the usual suspects--plot, character, voice, metaphor--with a palpable passion (he denounces a verb as "pompous" and praises a passage from Sabbath's Theater as "an amazingly blasphemous little melange"), and his inviting voice guides readers gently into a brief discourse on "thisness" and "chosenness," leading up to passages on how to "push out," the "contagion of moralizing niceness" and, most importantly, a new way to discuss characters. Wood dismisses Forster's notions of flat or round characters and suggests that characters be evaluated in terms of "transparencies" and "opacities" determined not by the reader's expectations of how a character may act (as in Forster's formula), but by a character's motivations. Wood, now at the New Yorker and arguably the pre-eminent critic of contemporary English letters, accomplishes his mission of asking "a critic's questions and offer[ing] a writer's answers" with panache. This book is destined to be marked up, dog-eared and cherished. (Aug.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
This compelling essay shows just how deeply, sensitively,
imaginatively and joyfully he reads * Scotland on Sunday *
There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go
to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't
many book reviewers like James Wood * Sunday Telegraph *
Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face --
D.J. Taylor * Independent on Sunday *
Enchanting... Witty, concise, and composed with a lovely lightness
of touch * Economist *
Exceptionally illuminating... brilliantly acute and enticingly
widely read work. It should be compulsory reading for anyone in the
reviewing trade and committed to memory before aspiring writers put
pen to paper. For those who intend to pursue the underrated calling
of reading fiction without wishing to add to its ranks, it will not
only make reading more pleasurable, but articulate what you may
have felt but never been able to express -- Rosemary Goring *
Herald *
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