Summary

Why does Ian McEwan give away in advance what will happen in Atonement? What does Donna Tartt's The Secret History have in common with Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders? Why is Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time printed in a sans serif font? Drawing on his popular weekly column in The Guardian, John Mullan sets out to answer these questions and to open our eyes to ways of understanding the writer's craft, and appreciating and enjoying their novels more fully. Prize-winners and reading group favourites of recent years are set alongside the great writers; Monica Ali, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Zadie Smith rub shoulders with Samuel Richardson and Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen and the Brontes, Joseph Conrad, Raymond Chandler, and Virginia Woolf. By apt comparisons of their techniques and devices, Mullan makes visible the techniques and effects we are often only half aware of as we read. How Novels Work makes literary criticism something that all fiction enthusiasts can do.