Letters to a Young Novelist

Rating:
Summary: Adroitly written
Review: "Letters" is an adroitly written instruction book for beginning writers. Incorporating an imaginary correspondent, Mario Vargas Llosa writes a series of letters to a young protege sharing his years of literary experience and outlining the principles that make a novel. It is an interesting vehicle for an instruction book and it works. Most books of how to write are overloaded with superfluous detail and have the annoying tendency to be academic in the approach to writing. This book is breezy, conversational, loaded with brilliant insight and fun to read. Sighting loads of examples from classic and not so classic novels he brings to life essential topics of style, voice, time, point of view and other narrative tools that the masters of the novel have incorporated for hundreds of years.

Many of the novelists Vargas Llosa sites for his many examples are unknown to me and he has roused my interest in reading their books. Alas, many of them are not translated into English (at least not that I can find on Amazon). But that does not diminish the satisfaction derived from reading this diminutive book. His best advice to any writer is to be a great reader. An example he has clearly followed himself.

Rating:
Summary: Essential Companion
Review: Reading Mario Vargas Llosa's works of literature is one of the best experiences a reader can have. In "Letters to a Young Novelist" Vargas Llosa shares the name of authors that have shaped his life as a writer, along with his personal insight on narrative techniques, and an unconditional love for the written word. Each chapter presents valuable information for anyone interested in the art of writing or for anyone who enjoys reading a well-written book.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but forgettable
Review: These short essays examine various literary techniques in detail but are ultimately unhelpful in writing (or reading) fiction. While discussing narrative options available to the writer, we never are offered advice of why different techniques work or when they might work. Or even how different authors make them work (except for one or two examples in the final chapters). There is only the indefinable je ne sais quoi. The book is very well written, witty and it is interesting to see the list of the works Vargas Llosa admires but ultimately, sad to say, forgettable.

Rating:
Summary: Concise, Real, and Enlightening
Review: This book is written as a series of letters to an anonymous, aspiring novelist. Obviously it is fashioned after Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", and although somewhat cheeky, the style and tone of these pseudo-letters fit Mario Vargas Llosa's objectives in writing.

Unlike some of the mainstream writing tutorials that are around, this volume, although slight in page length, has genuine and truly original insights that will help your writing tremendously. For example, whereas most writing instructors teaach you to stick to one point-of-view, Vargas Llosa says one of the most unbending rules in fiction is that no novel sticks to one kind of point-of-view, that it subtly changes. There are equally startling and persuasive directives regarding spatial and temporal matters in fiction.

The book is fun to read as well; only a novelist of Vargas Llosa's caliber can dismiss many of the so-called 'classics' and not seem vindictive and/or crazy. To fully understand this book (although not totally necessary), a reader should have at least a passing knowledge of the writers and their works that Vargas Llosa invokes as examples. i.e. Proust, Flaubert, Robbes-Grillet, etc.

If you are an aspiring writer, chances are good that this wry book will be an indispensable guide. Highly recommended.