Novels with character and voice: St Mary’s Twickenham Creative Writing MA reading list, first semester
I’m currently approaching the end of an enjoyable year studying for an MA at St Mary’s University, Twickenham — Creative Writing: The First Novel.
I thought I’d take a break from my dissertation (25,000 words of my first draft, due this September) to look at the first semester reading list from Autumn 2019, which was the focus of the Reading Like A Writer seminars taken by Dr Russell Schecter.
The first semester seminars were intended to help a cohort of writers beginning their first novel to get to grip with narrative technique so that we could recognise the internal logic of the novel. As covered topics such as style, genre, voice, character, openings and themes.
There was a lot of debate, within and outside the classroom, over the quality and usefulness of the reading list, so I thought I’d give my verdicts on each one.
1. The Collector, John Fowles. The Collector is considered a modern classic, and set a template you’ll see in many contemporary crime thrillers, as hapless psychopath Frederick and his victim Miranda enter a battle of wits. Will she submit to his misconceived idea of kidnapping the woman of his dreams, or escape her prison?
Unlike many of its imitators, this is a self-consciously literary novel, rich in literary allusions, in which the author examines his characters and passes snobbish judgement on the social changes of post war Britain.
Verdict: I don’t read a lot of crime fiction, but I enjoyed the tension between the protagonists, despite the fact that no one in The Collector is very likable. Yet it’s hard not to sympathise with Miranda’s desperation or to empathise with Frederick’s witless frustration. There’s no denying that Fowles grippingly depicts two people who will never find common ground.
Usefulness: It’s an ideal teaching text, featuring two unreliable narrators with incompatible goals and views of the world. A more recent author might have woven their stories together instead of sandwiching the victim between the kidnapper’s opening and closing narratives.
2. The Fifth Season, N K Jemisin. Probably the best of the semester, this is an Sf-tinged fantasy with two big twists and exceptional world-building that follows the stories of three women in a world that’s literally testing itself apart. Jemisin’s themes of discrimination, power and family are unavoidable, but they’re presented through absorbing tales in a fascinating, original environment.
Verdict: I enjoyed every moment of The Fifth Season, and the sequels are on my reading list. Jemisin’s narrative conceit was obvious reasonably early, but by then I was invested enough to find out how it unravelled, and I like an author who not only makes you work at the story with them but also fires up the imagination.
Usefulness: Multiple narrators, a grand twist, big themes, epic world building and great storytelling make this an ideal benchmark for high quality contemporary fantasy writers.
3. Austral, Paul McAuley. I’m a big SF reader, and I was surprised that an author as prolific and successful as Paul McAuley had escaped my attention until now. It just shows how difficult it is to forge anything like a canon these days.
The eponymous heroine and narrator of this near-future thriller is a genetically engineered outcast, on the run across the thawing Antarctic with the accidentally-kidnapped daughter of an important local politician. It’s a subtly dystopian look at the future that offers little hope for progressive ideals replacing the failed dogmas of 21st-century politics and economics.
Verdict: It’s a well-constructed novel that flashes between the present and Austral’s past, delivering a rich central character. The warming Antarctic is a vividly-realised environment — former botanist McAuley certainly knows his plants. It’s also chock-full of the kind of SF concepts I love, but there’s little joy in the story, the characters beyond Austral felt flat and the ending is resolutely downbeat.
Usefulness: Austral has a lot to offer in terms of story construction, and my favourite parts were the set up and flashbacks to Austral’s earlier escapades. But you can learn a lot from flaws, and we had useful discussions over pacing, why the denouement failed to deliver, and the merits of McAuley’s insertion of a novel-within-a-novel that mirrors Austral’s bid for freedom.
4. Rivers Of London, Ben Aaronovitch. The first volume in an extremely-successful series that’s expanded into graphic novels and a potential TV series (surely every author’s dream?), Rivers Of London is newly-minted police officer Peter Grant’s induction to The Folly, a mysterious branch of the Metropolitan Police that deals with paranormal law and order issues. Grant is sucked into two cases that conveniently intertwine: a ghostly murder and a dispute between the ancient gods of the River Thames.
Verdict: Rivers of London rattles along fast enough to leave its plot holes behind, at least on the first encounter, and it’s an enjoyable read that conjures up a believable London where the fantastic is never far away. The supporting characters are often sketched lightly and you shouldn’t pause too long to consider how the key female figures are drawn or used, though one could argue that young women seen through a horny young man’s eyes will always enter a scene breasts-first.
Usefulness: This was the most commercial novel on our reading list, with plenty of set-piece action scenes to draw on. Theme is almost non-existent, and even though Peter Grant is a young mixed-race man, race plays only a functional role in the story. It’s also a successful example of genre clash, mixing police procedural and supernatural in a way that must have been easy to pitch as “Harry Potter joins The Sweeney”.
5. The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, Neil Gaiman. A man in his 40s returns to his childhood home after the death of his father, and remembers a fantastic adventure in which he and his family were saved from an insidious ancient evil by a trio of friendly neighbourhood witches. It’s a fairy tale with a darkness that’s adults-only that invites questions of the way children see the world, how we choose to remember it decades later and what it means to cast off those childish misapprehensions.
Verdict: I’ve never read much Gaiman and didn’t stick with the American Gods TV series, but I consumed The Ocean At The End Of The Lane in a single sitting. I was close to tears by the end (and I don’t cry at sad films). It’s a novel that understands grief and the loss of innocence, and probably makes more sense as your life experiences stack up.
Usefulness: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is an accessible, short and emotionally deep fantasy — three things which rarely happen in our age of doorstop epic fantasy. Gaiman conjures a fantasy world which feels like it exists beyond the novel and populates both sides of the fantastic with vivid characters. It’s also a good example of unreliable narration and the weakness of genre categories beyond literary marketing.
This novel also provoked repeated debates about whether the events remembered by the narrator are real or imaginary. I didn’t find the debate itself very useful, but it was an excellent yardstick for the imaginative capacity of my fellow students.
