23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favorite books so far this year, March 26, 2008
This review is from: The Fiction Class (Paperback)
THE FICTION CLASS by Susan Breen
March 26, 2008
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Here is a book that caught me by surprise. THE FICTION CLASS centered on a frustrated writer who taught a weekly writing class once a week. At the same time, she was also dealing with an aging parent. Arabelle and her mother never got along, and while Arabelle went to visit her every week, it was out of duty and guilt, not love. But because of her writing class, she forms a new bond with her mother and begins to learn more about the woman that raised her.
While Arabelle's relationship with her mother changes, so does her relationship with her students of her weekly fiction writing class. I marveled at the depth of each character, and how real Breen was able to make each character appear. The class goes from strangers to friends, and I enjoyed the parallel experiences that Arabelle had inside the classroom and in the home where her mother now resided. One student in particular strikes a nerve with Arabelle, and he's the one that in a way bridges her life in the classroom with the life she has with her dying mother.
A short and fast read, yet full of depth, THE FICTION CLASS may end up on my list of top books for 2008. The subject matter was what I was able to relate to, a woman coming to terms with the relationship she had with her mother, a relationship that was at best stormy and fragile.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Writing book disguised as fiction, September 29, 2009
The most interesting parts of this book were the lessons the main character, Arabella, gave to her class on fiction writing. Having said that, give me Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" or Stephen King's "On Writing" any day of the week if I want to learn more about the craft of writing. Of all the characters in the book, the only ones I really liked were Arabella and her mother. Likewise, the story of the two of them working out their relationship as she approaches death in a nursing home was engaging. I didn't care about any of of the other characters (the students in her fiction class), nor did their attitudes, backgrounds and reasons for coming together in this fiction class ring true. None of the characters were well drawn enough to pull me in and want to know more about them. They were there to create bulk for the book and to make it seem as if there were more to the story than there really was. Ditto on the "love interest." I was never given a reason to believe that these two people would come together, nor did I see any reason why they would stay together. The whole romance seemed contrived, as if the author felt a book solely about a daughter and her dying mother wouldn't sell well. The book was entertaining enough as a quick read, but it's not a keeper.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life and Fiction Collide, March 21, 2008
This review is from: The Fiction Class (Paperback)
Susan Breen's novel The Fiction Class (Plume, 2008) is a book that kept my attention from beginning to end. This book interweaves the challenges of writing and teaching writing with the challenges of life itself.
Arabella Hicks, named for the heroine of her mother's favorite romance novel, balances copy editing jobs and weekly visits to her argumentative, hostile mother in a nursing home with teaching fiction writing to a varied adult ed class.
Arabella is 38, single, isolated, unsure of herself, and still grieving for her father, who died after many depressing years in a wheelchair as the result of Multiple Schlerosis. Her mother has advanced Parkinson's Disease.
A further depressing fact is Arabella's inability to conclude the novel she's been working on for seven years, Courting Disaster.
Her Wednesdays form a pattern: teach the class, then visit her mother, Vera Hicks, bringing coveted fast food that may or may not be appreciated. Vera's condition and mood swings are impossible to predict, so Arabella approaches the visits with dread.
Like many writing teachers, Arabella seems to rely on her students' written work to get to know them. Ironically, when her talk about the class inspires Vera to write a story of her own, Arabella learns about her mother as well.
The newly-awakened Arabella learns, in a sense, to believe in miracles as she finally begins to understand her students and her mother and to open her heart to love. and as that happens, she can begin a new novel.
The connections between real life and fiction have always fascinated me. My experiences as a reader, writer, teacher and visitor of my own mother in a nursing home make The Fiction Class ring amazingly true to me. The book also supports my belief in the power of writing for all, something that Arabella and Vera and most of the writing class students seem to discover as well.
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