He’ll flitter back and forth between different aspects of a topic–say, character–before he weaves it all together, delivering brilliant insight. What is remarkable here is the ease with which Wood makes his points he brings forth one point or another, exemplifies it through the use of concrete examples–picked with the greatest care–from which he draws persuasive arguments. It is a love letter, partly to the art and craft of writing, partly to the greatest works of literature: of Flaubert and Dostoyevsky and Woolf and a hundred others. How Fiction Works is among the finest examples of that particular branch of non-fiction that examines what goes into the fiction writer’s toolkit, and how it is applied. Before I picked this up, I knew nothing about who James Wood is having now finished it, I can tell with absolute certainty, he is one of contemporary criticism’s most gifted and steadfast voices, a lover of literature through and through.
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