Anita Shreve / Features / Untitled Books

What I'm reading: A Long Way Gone, How Fiction Works, and Far from the Madding Crowd

Anita Shreve

American author of, among many others, The Weight of Water, Fortune's Rocks, Body Surfing and her new novel Testimony.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

A memoir of one of the young boys who at 13 was forced to join the Sierra Leone army and commit dozens of atrocities before he was saved, taken out of the army and rehabilitated.

How Fiction Works by James Woods

Fascinating for writers and readers of novels. A brilliant look at fiction and how it does or does not portray reality, a subject near and dear to my heart as a writer.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

I somehow missed this the first time around. Am scarcely into Far From the Madding Crowd, but am struck by two aspects of the novel I'd forgotten since my college days. First, the patience with which Hardy is willing to deliver up his tale - a luxury that almost no writer has today; and second, a lack of rhythm to the prose which makes it seem more visceral and less facile than I recall.

Thursday, 2 October, 2008