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Lives Of The Novelists: A History Of Fiction In 294 Lives (2012)

by John Sutherland(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0300179472 (ISBN13: 9780300179477)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Yale University Press

review 1: This book is so much fun. Written by an academic and published by Yale university Press, Lives is not what I'd expected. It's dishy and gossipy, filled with fun facts that you probably didn't know about your favorite authors. This 818 page door stop dishes on well known authors from the 17th century to the 20th century. Pick this one up at your local library. Entries are typically 4-5 pages long, so you can read them between books or whenever you want a read but don't have a lot of time. I highly recommend it.
review 2: Deeply unsatisfying. Sutherland includes too many non-novelists (Poe, Saki, Samuel Johnson, O Henry, Ambrose Bierce) and too many obscure novelists (who the heck are Susanna Haswell and Charles Brocken Brown and John Polispri and Fanny Fern an... mored Sylannus Cobb Jr.) and too minor genre writers (Zane Gray, Earl Stanley Gardener, Issac Asimov) which would be OK if he was aiming for completeness... But he leaves out major figures like Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Pynchon, Colm Toibin, Edmund White, Hollinghirst, John Dos Passos, Willa Cather, Upton Sinclair, Lewis Caroll, Robertson Davies, Sherwopd Anderson, Flann O'Brien - but mediocrities like Edna Ferber are here. Worse, every writer gets roughly the same space. Is Vernor Vinge really the equal of James Joyce? Too infuriating to lead one to minor writers, too plagued with factual errors to be a reference. less

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