Maw Books

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Name of author: Susan Breen, first time novelist
Name of Book: The Fiction Class

Student Evaluation
Please bold the appropriate number

High Medium Low

Overall satisfaction with course (aka “the book”)
5 4 3 2 1

Instructor’s command of subject (aka “the story”)
5 4 3 2 1

Instructor’s ability to teach material (aka “the writing”)
5 4 3 2 1

Instructor’s openness to questions (aka “approachability”)
5 4 3 2 1

Overall effectiveness of instructor (aka “the author”)
5 4 3 2 1

Additional Comments: In The Fiction Class by Susan Breen, Arabella Hicks is an aspiring New York writer who has been working on her book for seven years. To pay the bills she reads corporate reports and teaches a fiction class in an adult education program which she enjoys (the class, not the reports). We, as the reader, can literally pull up a chair and sit in on this class as Arabella delves into teaching her students how to write a fiction story through character,voice, plot, climax, point of view, dialogue, pacing, and theme, among others. Even the writing assignments and evaluation (in which I adapted above) are interspersed throughout the book, if we are so inclined to try them out ourselves.

In her class, we are introduced to all of her students and I enjoyed how she would make up stories in her head about each one of them. Once a storyteller, always a storyteller! Sometimes I do this myself and wonder what people’s lives are like. I only wish that we were able to delve deeper into just a few characters rather than briefly all ten (ten?) of them. Arabella feels a special connection with the students in this particular class, but overall, I don’t think they added anything to story as a whole, with the exception of Chuck, with home she forges a love interest.

Each day after class Arabella visits her aging mother, Vera, in the nursing home. She doesn’t look forward to these visits and feels as though her mother is driving her crazy. Each week she tells her mother about her class, her students, the take home assignment and she soon finds out that her mother is an aspiring writer herself. She’s written her own semi-biographical story about caring for her crippled husband. The problem is she can’t come up with an ending, so she recruits Arabella to write it for her. Arabella can’t come up with an ending for her own book, how is she going to write one for her mother?

Through reading her mother’s story, Arabella learns more about herself, her mother and their story as a family. Can she make peace with her mother? Will they be able to reach an understanding? From the book jacket, “Arabella discovers that it is she who has a lot to learn about writing, and about love.”

To tell the truth: I liked this book and I didn’t like this book. The concept was interesting: taking us into a classroom to learn the mechanics of writing and using those same concepts as Arabella moves through her personal life. But what held me back was that I had a hard time understanding the mother-daughter relationship between Arabella and Vera. The reason: why there was a rift between the mother and daughter in the first place. Did I miss that part? Why didn’t they get along? Did I just not pick up on it? Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been picking up far too many of these books lately with strained mother-daughter relations. In fact, I haven’t read any books for a long time where there is a great mother-daughter relationship. If you know of one, I’d love to know. As the story builds up to a reconciliation between the two, it was hard for me to sympathize with these two characters when I didn’t understand what it was that they needed to overcome.

Perhaps you may enjoy this book more that I did. Maybe it just didn’t come to me in the right time in my life. Some books just do that to you. If you are an aspiring writer, you’ll enjoy The Fiction Class. It’s as if you’ve pulled up a chair and are free to join in on the discussion and take home assignments. And learn a thing or two about writing and life along the way.

Susan Breen gets a 5 for approachability! If I ever manage to email Susan her questions (eek!!), I’ll be posting an author interview in which we’ll discuss some of the finer points of the book. Visit Susan’s website here to learn more about her (which by the way – she teaches a fiction class!) and her new book.

Also, I received this book as part of Susan’s blog tour through Blog Stop Book Tours. Head on over on how you can be involved either as an author or reviewer.

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