How Fiction Works is a scintillating and searching study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterisation, dialogue, realism and style.
In his first full-length book of criticism, one of the most prominent critics of our time takes the machinery of storytelling apart to ask a series of fundamental questions:
What do we mean when we say we 'know' a character?
What constitutes a 'telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Why do most endings of novels disappoint?