A review by mariebrunelm
L'art de la fiction by David Lodge

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

For a year at the beginning of the 1990s, Lodge wrote weekly articles in a journal about the craft of writing. This book collects these pieces that the author reworked, expanding some of them and rewriting some passages. Each of them is introduced with a quote from an American or British novel (this being the author’s area of expertise, since Lodge worked as an academic as well as a novelist). The writer then writes about a specific theme relevant to the extract chosen, for example suspense, point of view, lists, magical realism, etc. The very short format of each section doesn’t lend itself to a lot of depth, but it works as a good introduction and may encourage readers who are also writers to ask the right questions. I appreciated the fact that each reflection was introduced by a paragraph taken from a published novel, so that there was always a good balance between theory and practice. Although I found this book a little surface-level, I do like the array of themes tackled and how they encourage you to make your own opinion about them.