How To Read A Novel : A User's Guide

Description

We assume reading is like riding a bicycle - you can do it or you can't. But reading well is almost as difficult as writing well. This book is a guide to how to do it. It shows how novels work, what they're about, what makes them good or bad, and how to talk about them with kindred spirits.

John Sutherland takes the reader on a literary journey from the first English novels of three hundred years ago to the present avalanche of ten thousand a year. In a series of informed and intelligent conversations set around a variety of exemplary texts he shows that reading a novel is not a spectator sport, but an intense participatory activity.

People of all ages, classes and nationalities read novels â Sutherland gives us new insights into what we read, new questions to pose and the means to pursue them.

Reviews

Sunday Times - 'an amiable stroll... there's much enjoyment to be had from the author's examination of everything...'Daily Mail - 'enlightening stuff'

Author description

John Sutherland is Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. He has published twenty books (including Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great Puzzles in 19th Century Fiction) and writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He was chairman of the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.