In plain English, I loved this book so much!!!  It seems impossible to me that a serious reader would not be fascinated with the craft, the art, and simple dogged work of writing fiction whether a novel or a short story, and McDermott answers that need with a smart, clever, and insightful book that straddles the ‘how to write’ and the ‘what is a writing life all about’ genres.

As I sit here at my desk in Vermont and look to my right at my bookshelves, I note ‘The Fun Stuff’ and ‘How Fiction Works’ by James Wood, ‘Aspects of the Novel’ by E.M Forster, ‘How to Write’ by Richard Reeves, ‘The Right to Write’ by Julia Cameron, Philip Lopate’s ‘To Show and to Tell’, ‘On Writing’ by Charles Bukowski, Annie Dillard’s ‘Living by Fiction’, ‘Writers on Writing’, a New York Times anthology, and that’s just one shelf!  Clearly, the writer’s need to explain herself and her craft is at least as great as the reader’s desire to know those things.

So, given all the previous works on the Art of Fiction as McDermott’s book is subtitled, why another one?  Because quite simply, McDermott is a consummate artist who brings a deep sensitivity to life’s challenges and the ability of literature to provide the writer and the reader with the courage and strength to face them. McDermott quotes a poem by Nickole Brown which contains the line ‘Don’t  you love being alive’ and responds “the best fiction is a proclamation, in spite of our mortality, in spite of suffering and death and intractable time, of our love for being alive. ”  That’s just about the best explanation for why we read what they write!!!!

As I read this book, I filled several pages with notes, quotes, books that I must read, and authors who I needed to become acquainted with.  Space and intractable time don’t allow me to share most of those notes, but here are a few random ones: in speaking of why literature is important, McDermott writes:  It’s the solace of art…Art that arrests time, tames it, preserves our heartache or our outrage or out joy, our days on earth, from the dulling indignity of time’s healing, obliterating hand.”  “I expect fiction to be about the pain and sweetness of life.”

Among her heroes is my own favorite, Vladimir Nabokov, whom she values for his beautiful sentences, passion, personal direct impression of life, and his sympathy with the human condition.

If you love to read, read this book by all means and savor McDermott’s love affair with writing.  I guarantee you’ll read your next novel or short story with a different eye.