Is it a novel or a book of writing tips?

It’s both actually, if you want it to be.  On her website, the author says it came out of “discussions I had with my mother”.  So it is about a writer and her mother, but also about a creative writing class.  Since Breen herself has taught such a class, parts of it are autobiographical, although she declares there is a lot of fiction woven in.

“Susan Breen has written a beautiful and inspiring story with a few surprises thrown in for good measure. Read it! There are so many layers to this book, you’ll find something that touches you or inspires you.” ~ Mary Evelyn Lewis at Virtual Wordsmith

The story is structured around the nine weekly classes and what happens in between them.  The sections on the classes are numbered sequentially, but they are interspersed with numbered chapters, so Chapter One comes after First Class, and is followed by Second Class.  Another element enters the structure part way through, but it would spoil the story to tell you about that in this review.

The writing tips fall out of the description of the classes.  In the first class, the teacher tells her students they will find it easier to start writing if they pick subjects that are important to them.  I love the way she expresses it: “Write about the thing that sets up a commotion in your mind, and you will find that the words come flowing.”  That’s one of the great things about this book.  Many aspects of writing may be familiar, but the language used to explain them is unique and wonderful.

Each class ends with an assignment that the students have to complete before the next, and the assignment follows the book section that describes the class.  For aspiring writers or blocked writers, these assignments alone could be helpful as prompts to get them going.

“This is a delightful first novel written with genuine wit and personality.” ~ Dennis Lythgoe at Deseret News

The first sections also include a brilliant demonstration of how to show your readers what your characters are like.  The main characters in this novel are the teacher and the students of the writing class, plus the teacher’s mother and her carers.

In Chapter One, after the class the teacher visits the nursing home where her mother wants to hear all about it.  The story of their relationship forms a backdrop to the classes, or it could be the other way around, depending on your point of view.  There is also a little love interest, so this book could appeal to quite a wide readership.

But writers, or aspiring writers, will certainly take away lots of writing tips from the class sections.  The section called Second Class discusses characters and what to do with them once the initial ideas for them have germinated – how to make them come alive on the page.  Third class concentrates on plot, the narrative arc, the inciting incident and the climactic scene.  (If you want to know what all that is about, you need to read this book.)

The fourth, fifth and sixth classes cover points of view, description and descriptive language, and dialogue.  In the sections on the final three classes you can learn, or revise, pacing, theme and voice – not active and passive, but the author’s voice that makes each one different from every other.

After reading this book, we should have no trouble writing our own novels.

And interspersed with all these tips and guidance are some hilarious goings-on, plus a very touching story about a mother/daughter relationship developing into a greater understanding and affection, through the medium of language and learning to write.

“Susan Breen teaches fiction classes for Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan. Her stories have been published by a number of literary magazines, among them American Literary Review and North Dakota Quarterly. She lives in Irvington, NY with her husband, children, two dogs and a cat. In her free time, which she has none of, she likes to read.” ~ From SusanjBreen.com