The Book Depository How Novels Work by John Mullan
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Price: £7.99
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: How Novels Work : Paperback : Oxford University Press : 9780199281787 : 0199281785 : 15 Apr 2008 : This book draws on the author's column in The Guardian, 'Elements of Fiction'. Using examples from well-known recent novels, it examines the techniques by which fiction works. It will widen the vocabulary of anyone interested in contemporary fiction, not least by showing where it has elements in common with classic novels of the past. The Book Depository How Novels Work by John Mullan - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780199281787
MPN: 0199281785
GTIN: 9780199281787
Author: Damaskcat
Rating: 5
Review: 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.
Author: Sphex
Rating: 2
Review: In his introduction John Mullan makes the important point that "space for quotation is one of the necessary privileges of criticism" and promises "to show how a critical vocabulary can make our opinions lucid." Unfortunately, my initial and perhaps somewhat naive enthusiasm that I was about to learn a whole lot of new and exciting things about how novels work soon deflated into indifference as I read on: the quotations rarely sparked my interest and the only critical vocabulary around was generated by me. Anyone who's tried to write a review of a novel for this website knows how hard it can be. The difficulty lies in finding even a few hundred words to do justice to a few hundred thousand, to figure out why it either did or didn't work. In going from one novel to the whole of literature, the task not only becomes daunting for even someone as obviously well-read as Mullan. It also risks losing that personal edge. Mullan has the luxury of over 300 pages and focuses on the mechanics of "narrating", "voices", "structure", etc., but to what end? Although technical reasons might sometimes explain why a particular novel fails to grab us, it's doubtful they can adequately account for a novel's capacity to engage us emotionally as well as intellectually. It is telling that "emotion" does not appear in the index and does not feature as a section heading (while those perennial concerns of many readers - "Intertextuality" and "Heteroglossia" - do). Hamlet caught the mystery of how fiction works when he wondered how Hecuba could make the player weep. This book is more of a Hamlyn guide to the gearbox. Mullan draws on a wide range of authors, and there is always the danger of dilution to the point of superficiality, if not absurdity. For example, he introduces Carol Shields as "a modern observer of ordinary women". Within a few lines, however, we learn that the "eldest of Reta's three daughters" in her novel "Unless" has dropped out of university and become a silent beggar. Hardly "ordinary". Elsewhere, he claims that literary novelists such as Julian Barnes and Iain Banks "often dabble in genre fiction - for the sales". No evidence from the authors is presented for this view, and it doesn't ring true. (In fact, I think Iain Banks tried getting his science fiction published without success until he broke through with the bestselling and "literary" Wasp Factory - the complete opposite of what Mullan is claiming.) At one point I felt sorry that he has to read books (sorry, "texts") of literary theory on grim topics like narratology. (Such books, apparently, "often contain diagrams of the narratives they analyse".) Mullan's dry response to Mieke Bal's stunning insight that the "character is not a human being, but it resembles one" is "Just so." By including such an asinine remark in the first place, however, he accords it too much respect. Perhaps academic literary theorists - inappropriately aping the the third-person objectivity of the physical sciences - sacrifice their subjective responses and are afraid to talk about what really matters, which is whether a novel touches your soul or leaves you cold. The irony is, reading any decent scientist on how atoms work, how the mind works, how language works, will leave you both fascinated by the subject and envious of their profession. You will also be in no doubt that they love their work. The terrible conclusion after reading even a few chapters of "How Novels Work" is that, if this is what constitutes "understanding" in the world of literary criticism, I'd rather remain in ignorance.
