Volume 54, Number 7 · April 26, 2007
The Malibu Decameron
By Diane Johnson
Ten Days in the Hills
by Jane Smiley
Knopf, 449 pp., $26.00
In her recent book about the novel (Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel[*]), Jane Smiley points out that while the writer gets to make the rules for his or her work, the reader has the option to read it or not, and is free to 'object or disagree.' This critical pact has required novelists since Boccaccio to think about the best ways to lure the reader into reading (for it remains true, with few exceptions, that novelists want their books to be read). They experiment with ways of telling stories, and because some experiments are more fruitful than others, a collective wisdom eventually accrues about how to proceed.
Review, 2474 words
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