How Fiction Works
By James Wood
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Three years after his last release, literary critic, New Yorker staff writer and Harvard professor James Wood brings us How Fiction Works, a dynamic, in-depth critique of the broad literary category known collectively as fiction. Referencing works across the board, from the Bible to Homer, Wood adeptly analyzes the elements that make up the stories we tell, dissecting the use of dialogue, character and plot while simultaneously engaging us to think deeper about what works and what doesn't. Wood's passion about the topic comes through clearly (if it wasn't already apparent in his other published writings, or the fact that he teaches courses on the practice of literary criticism). "What works well; why is this moving me?" Wood noted once in an interview. "The novel exists to move us, to shake us profoundly." This book is for literary aficionados (and fellow scholars of fiction aesthetics)—both readers and writers—hoping to further their insight into and understanding of the art of storytelling.
Called Out of Darkness
By Anne Rice
(Knopf)
Anne's Rice much-anticipated spiritual memoir, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, set for a fall 2008 release, is a look at the renowned author's Catholic faith. Her reclaiming of faith in 1996 was a much-talked-about affair that continues to surface anew with each fresh release of her Christ the Lord series (most recently, this spring's The Road to Cana), and in this intimate memoir, Rice details her spiritual path, from a childhood of holding closely to the Catholic tenets, to the events that led to her disbelief in God and her subsequent 38-year period as an atheist, to her eventual return to the Catholic Church. Darkness is a deeply personal and confession from the author who, in 2004, famously told Newsweek that she would "write only for the Lord."
