How Fiction Works

An Economist Best Book of the Year

A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year

A Library Journal Best Book of the Year

A San Francisco Chronicle Top 50 Best

Nonfiction Book of the Year

“An articulate reminder of the framework that is essential to constructing a lasting work of the imagination.”

—The Miami Herald

“Wood’s arranging of source material to prove his points is as fluid and lovely as any great composer’s arrangement of musical notes, and, if nothing else, How Fiction Works will inspire you to simply read more.… [A] lovely, eloquent ode to reading.”

—The Oregonian

“This admirable book is, among other things, a successful attempt to replace E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel as an accessible guide to the mechanics of fiction. Without losing sight of its promise to address the common reader rather than the specialist, How Fiction Works is much more sophisticated than Forster’s book.… Wood has thought keenly and profitably about such matters. He also benefits, as Forster did not, from wide reading in contemporary fiction.”

—Frank Kermode, The New Republic

“A perceptive and graceful essay, which almost anybody who’s interested in books could read.… Well worth reading.”

—The Sunday Independent (UK)

“Highly stimulating stuff—if it doesn’t make you hug your bookcase gratefully, you’re probably an incorrigible ‘formalist-cum-structuralist.’”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Through Wood’s close, mostly loving, frequently funny, occasionally dizzying examination, our reading experience is amplified and enriched.… Wood’s wit and occasional hilarious commentary are well timed and sizzlingly accurate.”

—Virginia Quarterly Review

“By examining the minutiae of character, narrative, and style in a range of fictional works that starts with the Bible and ends with Coetzee and Pynchon, he fondly and delicately pieces back together what the deconstructors put asunder.”

—The Guardian (UK)

“Serious readers of fiction will tackle this informing and enlightening new work with unrestrained relish.”

—Library Journal