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A review by trin
The Writing Class by Jincy Willett
4.0
Amy Gallup is a novelist who peaked too young; she now teaches adult extension writing classes. Things are going well with her new group of students, except someone—one of them—is sending poison pen letters and playing cruel pranks. And then things escalate…to murder!
Low marks for that summary. But Willett’s novel (for some reason being marketed as mainstream fiction even though it is, let’s face it, a mystery) is fantastic. She gives Amy a fascinating history that she unfolds slowly and cleverly, and both the scenes involving student critique and those involving Amy’s investigation are fun and vivid. (Though I have to say, even the worst writers in Willett’s fictional class are head and shoulders above some of what I encountered in my one college creative writing course.) Willett manages to evoke some genuine and intense creepiness with the idea of it could be any one of them, these people that I know and like; it reminded me of [book: Gaudy Night], in a way, although Willett is actually a bit braver in her choice of the eventual culprit. There’s a bit too much lantern-hanging at the end when Willett tries to excuse some of the loose ends, but I was captivated from start to finish. Recommended.
Low marks for that summary. But Willett’s novel (for some reason being marketed as mainstream fiction even though it is, let’s face it, a mystery) is fantastic. She gives Amy a fascinating history that she unfolds slowly and cleverly, and both the scenes involving student critique and those involving Amy’s investigation are fun and vivid. (Though I have to say, even the worst writers in Willett’s fictional class are head and shoulders above some of what I encountered in my one college creative writing course.) Willett manages to evoke some genuine and intense creepiness with the idea of it could be any one of them, these people that I know and like; it reminded me of [book: Gaudy Night], in a way, although Willett is actually a bit braver in her choice of the eventual culprit. There’s a bit too much lantern-hanging at the end when Willett tries to excuse some of the loose ends, but I was captivated from start to finish. Recommended.