The Fiction Class (Paperback)
by Susan Breen
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Overview
A witty, honest, and hugely entertaining story for anyone who loves books, or has a difficult mother. And, letas face it, thatas practically everybody . . .
On paper, Arabella Hicks seems more than qualified to teach her fiction class on the Upper West Side: sheas a writer herself; sheas passionate about books; sheas even named after the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel.
On the other hand, sheas thirty-eight, single, and has been writing the same book for the last seven years. And she "has" been distracted recently: on the same day that Arabella teaches her class she also visits her mother in a nursing home outside the city. And every time they argue. Arabella wants the fighting to stop, but, as her mother puts it, aJust because weare family, doesnat mean we have to like each other.a When her class takes a surprising turn and her lessons start to spill over into her weekly visits, she suddenly finds she might be holding the key to her motheras love and, dare she say it, her own inspiration. After all, as a lifelong lover of books, she knows the power of a good story.
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- ISBN-13: 9780452289109
- ISBN-10: 0452289106
- Publisher: Plume Books
- Date: February 2008
- Page Count: 296
Customer Reviews
Publishers Weekly® Reviews
- Reviewed in: Publishers Weekly, page 36.
- Review Date: 2007-09-10
- Reviewer: Staff
The collision of truth and fiction can result in romance or even redemption—or so say the writing exercises and life lessons that make up Breen’s debut novel. For years, Arabella Hicks’s love life, like her writing life, has felt flat and fruitless. Still, the 38-year-old copy editor and part-time teacher can summon neither the drive to date nor the wherewithal to finish her novel, Courting Disaster, now seven years in the rewriting. She’s anxious about her mother, Vera, whom she visits in a nursing home every Wednesday after teaching her writing class. Worried about Vera’s Parkinson’s disease—and still grieving her father’s death—Arabella discovers her personal fears seeping into classroom discussions of plot, point of view and dialogue. One student, the well-spoken, well-to-do Chuck, begins a relationship with Arabella and thus installs himself into the mother-daughter drama. Breen, a writing instructor, sometimes overplays her hand, but she does inject a dose of originality into an otherwise familiar setup. (Feb.)
- ISBN-13: 9780452289109
- ISBN-10: 0452289106
- Publisher: Plume Books
- Date: February 2008
- Page Count: 296





