"Making it real" is what the book is about as he tells us at the outset, "the real. Instead, what he gives us is a demonstration of smart reading, an exploration of works of fiction by a sensibility finely attuned to both the words on the page and the tricks an author plays in an effort to make it real. Wood doesn't waste time on defining the term "fiction." He assumes that we know it when we see it. This is anything but a densely theoretical book. Wood, who reviews for the New Yorker, has also published a novel, "The Book Against God," so he knows firsthand about the making of fiction. But if any contemporary critic is up to the task, it's James Wood, who has read more and better than the rest of us. "How Fiction Works" is an audacious title, not only because explaining the mechanisms of fiction is a large task, but also because fiction doesn't seem to be working as well as it used to, if you take the decline in book sales as evidence. By James Wood Farrar, Straus and Giroux 266 pages $24
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |