Customer Reviews

Letters to a Young Novelist

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"Letters" is an adroitly written instruction book for beginning writers. Incorporating an imaginary correspondent, Mario Vargas Llosa writes a series of letters to a young protege sharing his years of literary experience and outlining the principles that make a novel. It is an interesting vehicle for an instruction book and it works. Most books of how to write are overloaded with superfluous detail and have the annoying tendency to be academic in the approach to writing. This book is breezy, conversational, loaded with brilliant insight and fun to read. Sighting loads of examples from classic and not so classic novels he brings to life essential topics of style, voice, time, point of view and other narrative tools that the masters of the novel have incorporated for hundreds of years.

Many of the novelists Vargas Llosa sites for his many examples are unknown to me and he has roused my interest in reading their books. Alas, many of them are not translated into English (at least not that I can find on Amazon). But that does not diminish the satisfaction derived from reading this diminutive book. His best advice to any writer is to be a great reader. An example he has clearly followed himself.

This book is written as a series of letters to an anonymous, aspiring novelist. Obviously it is fashioned after Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", and although somewhat cheeky, the style and tone of these pseudo-letters fit Mario Vargas Llosa's objectives in writing.

Unlike some of the mainstream writing tutorials that are around, this volume, although slight in page length, has genuine and truly original insights that will help your writing tremendously. For example, whereas most writing instructors teaach you to stick to one point-of-view, Vargas Llosa says one of the most unbending rules in fiction is that no novel sticks to one kind of point-of-view, that it subtly changes. There are equally startling and persuasive directives regarding spatial and temporal matters in fiction.

The book is fun to read as well; only a novelist of Vargas Llosa's caliber can dismiss many of the so-called 'classics' and not seem vindictive and/or crazy. To fully understand this book (although not totally necessary), a reader should have at least a passing knowledge of the writers and their works that Vargas Llosa invokes as examples. i.e. Proust, Flaubert, Robbes-Grillet, etc.

If you are an aspiring writer, chances are good that this wry book will be an indispensable guide. Highly recommended.

In this short but entertaining and enlightening little book, Mario Vargas Llosa discusses the art of writing fiction. As the title states, it is divided up into 11 letters ostensibly written to an admiring young novelist.

This is not so much a "how-to" writing guide, with step-by-step instructions on improving one's craft and abilities. Though it addresses many of the same subjects (Style, Narration, Time, etc.) it still, to some degree, feels like it touches on something deeper, within the writer himself. It's hard for me to say exactly what that is at this point, several months after I finished reading the book, but suffice it to say, at the time I had a distinct feeling that I was not only reading about how to improve my writing, but myself as one who desires to write. In this regard, I found the book extremely encouraging. The style is warm, open, and friendly. No sense of arrogance, no put-downs, no bitter cynicism or sarcasm. Go live and love life and bring that to your writing. And more importantly: write, write, write and do not stop.

I enjoyed reading this book, not only because it was full of helpful advice, but because it made me feel like writing is something that I can do and have as much right to do as anyone else, including seasoned and published authors. It's easy to fall prey to the notion that we aren't as worthy of writing because we aren't as talented, practiced, capable or whatever as the greats but it isn't true. Anyone can write and we should all strive to improve ourselves and our writing. This book mentions several ways to do just that but there are many more. The best and only way to figure them out is to sit down and start punching out word after word after word.

If I knew an aspiring writer who needed some advice and encouragement, I would give him this book. Definitely recommended.

Reading Mario Vargas Llosa's works of literature is one of the best experiences a reader can have. In "Letters to a Young Novelist" Vargas Llosa shares the name of authors that have shaped his life as a writer, along with his personal insight on narrative techniques, and an unconditional love for the written word. Each chapter presents valuable information for anyone interested in the art of writing or for anyone who enjoys reading a well-written book.

The introduction leads one to believe this is geared toward a fourteen or fifteen year old potential writer. God knows it would have flown over my head at any time before my mid-twenties - both the intellectual discussions presented and the literary references made.

It still shown a bright blazing light at my near complete ignorance of Spanish and Latin American novelists. But taken in the sense of "young" meaning "beginning" novelist, it was a good read with a lot of interesting viewpoints on the makeup of a novel.

These short essays examine various literary techniques in detail but are ultimately unhelpful in writing (or reading) fiction. While discussing narrative options available to the writer, we never are offered advice of why different techniques work or when they might work. Or even how different authors make them work (except for one or two examples in the final chapters). There is only the indefinable je ne sais quoi. The book is very well written, witty and it is interesting to see the list of the works Vargas Llosa admires but ultimately, sad to say, forgettable.

This was summer reading for my junior year of high school IB English. It's a true brain bender. It is a work of fiction, in epistolary form (letters), from an established author to a young man who has been writing asking for novel-writing advice. I saw that someone tagged this as non-fiction. No it is FICTION. The jaw-dropping reason for this is below.

If you think this is a guide you could easily use in your own writing exploits, think again! Only a true academic-writer-snob would even attempt that. These letters present a guide in very loosely organized chapters. Each one contains the narrator's thoughts on complicated novelistic techniques (the ones that cleverly mess with the reader's sympathies, knowledge, understanding, etc.) with stream-of-consciousness ponderings and rambling anecdotes. It's like one big knot of words. He'll diverge from one point, ramble, and then pick up the point again -- you've by then forgetten all about it -- pages later.

Even more complicated is that, as a piece of fiction, Llosa uses the complicated reader-manipulating literary techniques he writes about IN THE TEXT ITSELF. That's right -- Llosa uses the fictional aspect of his guide to employ the very techniques he writes about. It's almost imperceptible and is certainly head-ache inducing. The layers upon layers of literary devices are exhausting.

I usually really like the clever complexities of "classy literature", but I'll save that for Madame Bovary (foxy!), or maybe Heart of Darkness (the horror!) if I'm feeling particularly scholarly. Letters to a Young Novelist is just too smug and dull for me to appreciate its genius recreationally.