Title: The
Fiction Class
Author: Susan Breen
Publisher: Plume
ISBN: 978-0452289109
Pages: 296
In the backroom of a used bookstore, I was browsing, not
intending to purchase anything. But, my hand touched The Fiction Class and my
eye was drawn to the cover. I left the
store with the book (yes, I paid for it).
I related to the main character with her aspirations of being published
and her struggle to care (both physically and emotionally) for her aging mother
in a nursing home. It hit close to home.
Arabella writes in her small apartment in New York, while making
a living editing other’s work and teaching a fiction class. A new semester begins, yet it is similar to
semesters before – a class of people who want to write for a variety of
personal reasons, but many don’t want to commit to the hard work of writing and
revising. And, after class, Arabella has
to visit her ailing mother in the nursing home. Vera doesn’t always welcome
Arabella and they have a complicated past.
But, Vera reveals that she has a story to tell and wants her daughter to
help her finish it. Vera’s story is a
thinly veiled retelling of her own life, but by reading it, Arabella begins to
see her mother as a person, rather than her mother. Arabella brings the story to her fiction
class, and she also begins to open herself to the students she teaches. Both of these changes help her re-define
herself separate from her childhood narrative and bring closure to many open
wounds.
Although the book is not a how-to book, the author inserts
the writing exercises that Arabella brings to her class – and some of them are
useful. And, though there were many
tears through the book (from me, not the characters) the ending was quite satisfying.
The author has a website for the book, which includes the writing exercises here: http://www.susanjbreen.com/
