When E.M. Forster published Aspects of the Novel in 1927, he was not writing as a critic, and the success of the book is due to precisely that. Forster gives us the intuitive judgements of a novelist – a series of rough observations full of verve. James Wood’s How Fiction Works is indebted to Forster’s study and turns on like questions (what constitutes a convincing character? How does narra ... (read more)