While "How Fiction Works" does not claim to be an exhaustive survey of world fiction (it doesn’t confine itself to fiction written in English, or, for that matter, strictly to prose), this book engages with brio in an ongoing conversation about reading as well as writing fiction, and James Wood makes his contributions in an accessible format and a voice by turns authoritative and charmingly effusive. Wood argues that modern narrative begins with Flaubert, and this assertion frames his discussions of a wide range of works. His main topics of narration, detail, character, language, dialogue, and classification of fiction are broken into brief segments (and are printed in surprisingly large type). The structural looseness of Wood’s admittedly “little volume” is surely influenced by his focus on “only the books I actually own—the books at hand in my study.”

This personal preference may account for some notable omissions. Foremost, to me, is Wood’s neglect of the short form. He does make frequent reference to Chekhov and attends briefly to Katherine Mansfield's stories, but he overlooks some masters of short fiction, notably Eudora Welty, William Trevor, and Alice Munro (though Munro merits a passing mention). Wood’s helpful unpacking of E.M. Forster’s categorization of “round” and “flat” characters may have benefited from attention to the rules that short stories establish as distinct from novels.

Similarly, while Wood ventures into the terrain of contemporary fiction—and he gives a most satisfying critique of a sloppy passage from Updike’s "Terrorist"—he is relatively tied to the canon and, despite his many nods to Virginia Woolf, to male writers. Also in terms of scope, Wood turns, briefly and rather reluctantly, to the Pandora’s box of genre fiction in the final chapter “Truth, Convention, Realism,” principally to deride genres as “commercial realism” and, as such, an extension of commercial cinema. While I’m not a fan of either, it is difficult to accept as more than merely dismissive his claim that the “efficiency” of genres “takes what it needs from the much less efficient Flaubert or Isherwood, and throws away what made those writers truly alive.” Surely a more nuanced inquiry into form and genre is merited (Wood having in the same section also introduced a comparison with formalist poetry in a similarly offhand manner), and I wonder what Wood makes of writers such as Michael Chabon who explicitly play with expectations established by genre. In this way, the book ends on heavy footing, enmeshed in theory and rebutting “complaints against realism." Realism--harking back to Flaubert--has been the underpinning of this book, but addressing this theoretical framework earlier may have grounded more of Wood's arguments throughout.

These charges actually speak to a strength of this book: Wood invites conversation. His meander through his bookshelves enacts a love for the particularities of writing with which the reader can’t help but identify. You will find here no iron-clad linguistic or stylistic rules, but an astute analysis of how each choice suits a particular purpose—how the authorial voice clings to that of a character, then distances itself, to simultaneously encourage and withhold sympathy; how varying time signatures achieve a modern cinematic effect; how passive voice, far from an unconscious defect, reinforces the “comically gentle” nature of a character. Bearing out the title’s promise, Wood is at his best when engaged in close reading that demonstrates precisely how a particular passage works in a particular way.

Even Wood’s footnoted digressions (e.g., on self-plagiarism and allegorical names), which at times can verge on self-important literary travelogues, sustain interest; some are fascinating insights, such as (for the non-French speaker) his speculation that the French obsession with narrative and realism derives from the preterite, a past tense in French used, never in speech, but solely in writing.

Wood analyzes with remarkable clarity. I borrowed this lively book from the library, but find myself wishing I owned it, to leave open the possibility of dipping into a few pages again while browsing through my own bookshelves. ( )

Sparkling. I can't say I am going to retain many of the lessons, but the writing is very fine, and Wood allows you to sample dozens of great passages, and then explains exactly what's so great about them. It feels like taking a submarine ride and seeing just how deep the ocean is, even if there's no practical way for me to ever get there by myself.

Does the typography on the dust cover mean something special? On the hardcover edition, the word works is in italics (although it's not specially designated on the title page or on the cover of the paperback edition, for that matter.) Is there a reason? At first, I thought this signified either (or both) of one or two things: (1) what are the intricate mechanisms that power a piece of fiction, the cogs, bolts, drive shafts, etc. and how do these components come together to get that piece of fiction whizzing along, or (2) how much, and what kind of, sheer effort goes into the production of fiction, the sweat, the tears, the agony, et cetera. Woods does spend quite a bit of time on the former (although not in any part icular systematic or, dreadful word, theoretical way) with just a few glances at the latter. What his preface, though, seems to say is that how can the reading (or writing, I suppose) of fiction "work" for us in making us a better person? Not necssarilfy a nicer person, but a more perceptive, thoughtful, imaginative person. If this is the case, his style and his strategy are perfectly adequate. Normally, when reading Wood's reviews in the New Yorker, I feel like someone slogging through a studen't exercise in translating something from Serbian into English. This book is much, much better than that. Not to beat around the bush any longer, I liked it pretty well. ( )

I have mixed feelings about this one. It was worth my time since it gave me quite a few authors to look up and reminded me why I love some of my favorites, but there were also so many allusions to books that I sometimes felt left out of the Wood's arguments. At the same time, there was plenty of material to get me thinking about writing strategies that made the read worthwhile; my only complaint would be that sometimes his thoughts seemed painfully obvious, while at others they seemed somewhat undeveloped. It is extremely readable, though, and broken into small sections that make the book more easily digestable, along with making it a simple task to find chapter-bites or sound-bites on certain materials that you might want to take into a class or group discussion.

I'd recommend this to folks who are interested in writing fiction or expanding their literary horizons, as well as folks who are fans of the classics and literary fiction (as opposed to more acceptably mainstream). I also think it's more paletable in small doses and taken as breaks instead of in long sittings; I kept it on my desk at work for those ten or fifteen minute stretches when there's no sense in starting a large task, but no sense either in just sitting still for the duration; Wood's short short chapters make the book ideal for that sort of reading. ( )

Sometimes I prefer to let the hype die away before I open a book. When How Fiction Works was released last summer, I saw more than a few snide references to this being the book all writers and wannabees would be reading. Though I don't always have the same take as Wood on books, I think his insights are invaluable and a necessary part of the discourse about fiction. Sadly, How Fiction Works feels all but forgotten now that winter has arrived. That makes me even happier that I saved it for my last book of 2008. It truly is a gem that I will put on the shelf next to Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners and to which I will return whenever I'm "stuck" on a review, or on a tricky piece of editing of my own fiction. Though deceptively easy to read, his ideas provide quite a feast for the mind. Wood's discourses on narrating, detail, and most especially character were quite delicious. I've had great difficulty in the concept of flat and round characters since my MFA days and this concept kept coming up as a benchmark for deciding whether a piece of fiction worked or not. I, like Wood, have been bothered by Forster's slotting of characters into flat or round cubbies. Every time I've tried to pigeonhole a character in that way, they've escaped. Here's an excerpt from Wood. Reading it made me feel as though I've been invited in from the cold. Now, if only I could go back to one of those workshops armed with Wood and show those flat-rounders a thing or too.

"The novel is the great virtuoso of exceptionalism: it always wriggles out of the rules thrown around it. And the novelistic character is the very Houdini of that exceptionalism. There is no such thing as 'a novelistic character.' There are just thousands of different kinds of people, some round, some flat, some deep, some caricatures, some realistically evoked, some brushed in with the lightest of strokes. ... there are scores of fictional characters who are not fully or conventionally evoked who are also alive and vivid." ( )