Book Review: The Fiction Class

Happy Book Review Tuesday. Today, we’re going to talk about a very cool piece of fiction that I stumbled upon in my own personal library recently. The Fiction Class is a story about Arabella Hicks (poor dear – blame her mother for her name; she does), a frustrated writer who has been struggling with her novel – and her mother – forever, and who teaches a weekly fiction writing class for authors-to-be. The book is organized along with the class syllabus; the story shifts between chapters devoted to Arabella’s class and her personal life. Eventually, of course, the two overlap. Much hilarity ensues – along with much frustration, poignancy, and a painful-but-crucial realization or two.

The story is easy to read and Arabella is easy to relate to. This may not be high literature, but there are some clever lines and a handful of meaningful life lessons hidden among the highs and lows of trying to teach other people how to do something you love. The supporting characters – her students: the Cary Grant guy, the Princess, the Ne’er Do Well, the Sensitive Guy, the Middle-Aged Woman Trying Too Hard and her Overbearing Mother – appear stereotypical at first. But whether that is who they really are or merely Arabella’s view of them becomes a point of contention and an interesting plot point throughout the course of the story. As does Arabella’s own personality.

I think I have to say that the best part of the book for me was the writing class. Sure, Arabella’s own journey was a nice, solid story. But without the counterpoint of the class – their experiences, frustrations, struggles, goofiness – it would have been standard chick-lit fare, which is not usually my cup of tea. The chapters about the class really saved the day for me – not only because the characters were fun and put Arabella into some fantastically entertaining situations (I mean, come on, they got her to spend several classes seriously devising the backstory and motivations of Pussy, a 60-year old Vegas dancer with family in Buffalo), but also because of the writing exercises.

Each class is organized around an element of writing – plot, character, description, etc. – and at the end of each, Arabella assigns her class a homework assignment. And each homework assignment is provided at the end of the chapter for you, the reader, as well. I loved this as a story construct. It helped the class understand how a novel is assembled and it formed a nice organizational framework for Arabella’s own experiences. And not only her experiences with the class, but also those of her personal life – obviously with respect to her relationship with her mother (after all, no book about a single woman is ever complete without a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship, now is it?), but less obviously and more interestingly with respect to her novel-in-progress.

So I have decided to use the structure of Arabella’s fiction class for a series of posts. I will take on each of her homework exercises – starting tomorrow. There are a total of nine, plus an extra credit assignment. Arabella’s students got feedback on their homework assignments – I hope you, my beloved readers, will willingly take on the teacher’s role for me and do the same!