How Novels Work

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 Carré'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.

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.

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."

Pretty elementary. It points out much that is obvious and discusses many books that few Americans will have read. Read Francine Prose's "Reading LIke A Writer" instead.