Customer Reviews

The Writing Class

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In Jincy Willett's "The Writing Class," Amy Gallup is conducting a fiction workshop in a southern California university. She is nearing sixty, eats and drinks too much, and has grown increasingly jaded. Although she was a published novelist at twenty-two, her success was modest and short-lived, and she has written nothing of note (except for a lackluster blog and biographical sketches) for many years. Amy's closest companion is her old basset hound, Alphonse, and when she looks back at her life, it is with a rueful sadness. "While everyone else tried to live 'in the moment,' Amy learned to hide from hers. It was the only thing she worked at, really." Her existence consists, for the most part, of dread and boredom. Her teaching job is a poorly paid gig with no health benefits, but after conducting the class for fifteen consecutive quarters, she can do it in her sleep. Sometimes, when she has a decent group of students, working with them brings her a modicum of pleasure.

Amy's current class is an unusual mix, including: Dr. Richard Surtees, a handsome and arrogant physician; Pete Purvis, a pale and reserved young man; the matronly Dorothy (Dot) Hieronymus; Sylvester Reyes, a tall and broad-shouldered high-school football coach; Marvy Stokes, a balding chemistry teacher; the sharp and muscle-bound Frank Waasted, who holds a doctorate on magical realism; Edna Wentworth, an intelligent, no-nonsense former schoolteacher; Tiffany Zuniga, a pretty and smug young woman; Charlton Heston (call me Chuck), who enjoys making wisecracks; a lawyer named Harold Blasbalg; and the obese and enthusiastic Carla Karolak, a garishly dressed acolyte who has been enrolled in Amy's workshop for the past six quarters. Carla idolizes Amy and has committed her beloved mentor's lessons to memory. Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that one of Amy's students is a homicidal maniac.

At its best, "The Writing Class" is hilarious. The early chapters are delightfully sarcastic and lead the reader to expect an above-average mystery with satirical overtones. Willett skewers the conventions of writing workshops. The earnest students nervously bring in their mostly hackneyed and horribly written manuscripts, hoping for positive feedback and constructive criticism. Some of the participants are desperate, others pretentious, and a few have an air of indifference, as if they are sitting in the class merely to pass the time. Amy is a well-drawn and original protagonist, "a bitter, peculiar person, aware at all times of her bitterness and peculiarity." We cannot help but sympathize with this self-aware individual who has made an uneasy truce with her misery.

Alas, the author is unable to sustain the clever tone of her introductory chapters. After the first murder, "The Writing Class" becomes a standard whodunit, in which the students and teacher take on the role of amateur sleuths. Amy uses her expertise to analyze her students' writing styles and the killer's poison pen letters, hoping to find clues that will lead to the perpetrator's identity. For some inexplicable reason, the police have little interest in solving the crimes. "The Writing Class" starts out as a perceptive and bittersweet spoof (touching on the themes of loneliness, the creative process, the beauty of language, and the sadness of lost opportunities). There are some wonderful passages, including this one: "Only in art were there clichés; never in nature. There were no ordinary human beings. Everybody was born with a surprise inside." Unfortunately, like Amy's once promising career, "The Writing Class" ultimately loses steam, and ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

Having taught a community ed. novels class several times, I could really relate to this book. The main character, Amy Gallup, is an atypical heroine to say the least. She is overweight and plain and bordering on agoraphobic. In her early twenties, she published a successful novel, but from there, her career went steadily downhill. Teaching an adjunct university writing class is her salvation, but she doesn't know it yet. She'd much rather stay at home with her basset hound, Alphonse, who doesn't like her much.

Amy's students run the gamut from professional writers to those who are there to meet the opposite sex. Several are extremely talented. The first two student excerpts, one about how to choose the rope you will use to commit suicide, are incredibly good. Amy's suggestions are usually right on the mark, especially when she tells her class not to assume the writer of the suicide poem is writing about her own life. Of course, a writing class doesn't present enough of a conflict to encompass the entire novel, so Willet throws in a stalker; one of the students is making nasty comments on the other writers' hard copies and making harassing phone calls to Amy herself. When one of them dies, we have a full-fledge murder mystery to rival "Ten Little Indians."

Anybody who has been to a writers' conference will recognize what Willett is getting at here. There is a whole industry built to take advantage of beginning writers. Probably the most excruciating scene is one during which an old lady reads her mystery play to the class. It's Amy's job to find something possible to say about student writing, even when there's nothing good to say. The murderer is a bitter person who starts out targeting the editors who have rejected his/her work. When that isn't enough, he/she homes in on Amy's writing class. Amy's most significant observation was, "(He/she) went wrong when he/she started keeping score."

Willett structures her novel by occasionally letting us read the murderer's letters and diary entries, as well as his/her comments on student papers. This lets us participate in trying to find the killer. There's some humor as well, most of it centering on Carla, a student who has taken Amy's class five times.

The Writing Class is a book to satisfy the hard-to-please, for it satisfies on so many levels. As a mystery, it is a not-easily-guessed puzzle, all the way to the end. It is funny enough to please the most finicky of humor-lovers. Action sequences are vividly described and grip the reader. Character development is believable, and is not limited to the protagonist, Amy. The book even serves as a source of tips for wanna-be writers. Willett has hit the mark with this one just as surely as she did with Winner of the National Book Award and Jenny and the Jaws of Life.

My request to Ms. Willett would be that she now take Amy by the hand (or by the scruff of the neck, if needed) and lead her into other books, perhaps in other genres altogether: a Fabio-emblazoned romance called Love's Lascivious Extension Prof, an espionage thriller titled Mightier Than the Sword, perhaps some sci-fi - The Universal Point of View, some erotica - Amy Does Alexandria, a bit of distopian fantasy - What Rhymes With Clockwork Orange? If anyone can tackle, successfully and with wit, the genres currently sub-dividing bookstore shelves, it will be Jincy Willett.

I loved "The Writing Class." Jincy Willet truly captures the loopy world of writing workshops. Yes, read this book for the incredibly well-crafted murder mystery, but also for the very informative lessons on creative writing. Willet is subtle, brilliant, wise and witty, very funny and yes, more than a little bit naughty. I love her writing and suggest you read all her books. I teach writing and often refer students to her fiction as example of exquisite character and plot construction. The gal is a master at it!

One reviewer complained that the novel turns into a whodunit, and that is true. So if you do not like that kind of thing, you won't like this book. If you do, however, this is perfection of the genre. I was spellbound from the first class. I used to teach writing at a Community College, so I really identified with the main character and her mixture of dread and sincere desire to teach. Willett finesses the difficult problem of showing you bad writing without writing badly admirably. The little stories are so perfect for the characters who wrote them, that they are good in that way and interesting for that reason. My only complaint about this work is that I think the title will put people off just as the title of her previous novel, "Winner of the National Book Award," probably did. The previous book was the best treatment of sexual power struggles and that I have ever read. You sure wouldn't imagine that from the title. Here again, the title leads you to expect some silly character study of people in a writing class, instead of a really fun murder mystery. It is sort of like the title of Amy Gallup's blog, "Go Away." Willett is a mysterious character herself. How can a person who writes this well withhold her talent from the world? She has only written two novels and a collection of short stories, and all of these are so satisfying.

Amy Gallup, a promising writer in her youth, is now a middle-aged and teaching adult education extension courses in fiction writing. Amy is a loner who is frightened of being alone, a blocked writer who can only write clever lists on the blog she considers private. She lives with a basset hound who merely tolerates her and has no friends. The 13 students in her new class at first seem totally hopeless, but they coalesce into a decent group and Amy finds herself enjoying the class meetings. Then someone in the class begins writing cruel critiques, making threatening phone calls, and playing frightening practical jokes. When one of the class members is found dead, possibly murdered, Amy informs the administration, and the class is immediately canceled. But the rest of the group want to continue, and they meet to try and figure out which class member is the murderer. This black comedy is often laugh-out-loud funny, especially at the beginning of the book, and the suspense builds to the final pages.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/W_Authors/Willett_Jincy.html

Prior to pouring over "The Writing Class," I had no idea what a Willett--let alone a Jincy--even was. Needless to say, this has since changed. Today, if someone were to ask, "What is a Jincy Willett?" I'd know how to respond. Among many other things, Jincy Willett happens to be one of America's most talented and ambitious contemporary writers.

"The Writing Class" is downright masterful. Period. Out of the thirty or so novels that I've devoured thus far this year, Willett's latest has proven the most satisfying of all, outranking the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Walter Mosley, and Ha Jin. Never before have I encountered a narrative so well-articulated, well-paced, and well-plotted. Infused with a killer subplot (pun intended), "The Writing Class" takes the tired thriller and transforms it into something at once lush and literary. The character development here is downright extraordinary. The reader's first impression of Willett's writing class--that is, the dozen or so university extension students around whom the novel centers--is a wholly positive one. Though caricatures of their real-life equivalents, the pupils prove largely three-dimensional and, surprisingly enough, likable. Two hundred pages later, this is no longer the case. Weaving characterization into dialogue and throughout class lectures, Willett tantalizes the reader with keen life observations and mental chatter whilst her characters shift from sympathetic to shady. As the body count rises (yes, classmates are killed) and the Sniper's threats intensify, it becomes increasingly obvious that nothing and nobody is safe. Guard your pens and pencils, writers; there's a murderer in our midst.

WHAT'S MASTERFUL --
+ Willett's sharp tongue and dry wit
+ The three-dimensionality of her characters
+ The novel's quick pace and great depth
+ Willett's pertinent advice for aspiring writers
+ The author's poignant dissection of human nature
+ The novel's psychological thrills

WHAT'S MEDIOCRE --
- The occasional cheap and/or needless red-herring
- The novel's conclusion; "loose-ends" not sufficiently addressed
- The feasibility of the text's premise (classmate is murdered yet students are vehement that the session continue?)
- Willett's back flap photo; who is this woman with half of her face obscured by shadow?

WHAT'S MISCARRIED --
X The pre-release proofreading; someone ought to have been fired for sending this to print in its present form. Typos and grammatical errors not only abound but also distract from the otherwise engrossing plot.

I'll first confess that I am academic (although not of the fiction writing kind), and I thought the indirect portrayal of the academy was hilarious. And mysteries are the only the only kind of fiction I read. I thought the plot was just fine, but the real attraction was writing itself: complex, hysterical, ironic, just great. I also like that the reviews here on the Amazon site (both good and bad) would be what we would have expected from the writing class itself - except that i don't see anything about metaphors... I'll be looking at the rest of Jincy's work, and hoping for more.

First Line: Lumbers into class five minutes late, dragging, along with her yard-wide butt, a beat-up vinyl briefcase stuffed with old notebooks.

Amy Gallup used to be a contender. A published and award-winning writer at the age of twenty-two, she now exists by writing blurbs for other authors' books and by teaching creative writing classes for the local university's extension program. Her former life is gone: no career, no husband, just a grumpy, flatulent basset hound who barely tolerates her.

This semester's class is filled with the usual suspects: a doctor who wants to be the next Robin Cook, the enthusiastic repeat student, the slacker, the know-it-all, and so on. Amy's seen them all before. But when students start getting threatening phone calls in the middle of the night and frightening pranks pulled on them out in the parking lot, Amy knows that this class is different. When one of the students is murdered, the class bands together to discover who among them is the killer.

The Writing Class really didn't work as a mystery for me because it took very little thought to realize whom the killer had to be. The occasional chapters written from the killer's point of view were very jarring and pulled me out of the story instead of raising suspense. Where the book did succeed was with the character of Amy herself. She is very well-drawn and comes to life on the page as the details of her life unfold.

Another flash of brilliance was during the class lectures. There is a gold mine of writing tips contained in Amy's lectures, and the information is given in a very entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny style.

If you pick up this book wanting a strong, solid mystery, you may be in for disappointment. If you pick it up wanting a story about a truly involving character who just happens to give great advice on writing, you should enjoy The Writing Class.

An extension writing class contains a prankster, whose cruel jokes escalate into murder.

I was quite cynical when this turned up at work. It smacked of self-indulgence, thinly-veiled digs at real people, and cheap jokes. However, a free reading copy is a free reading copy. And it was wonderful.

The characters are all types familiar to ... well, anyone who has attended a writing course, or simply belonged to a community of fanfic writers. There's the nice middle-aged lady who is uncomfortable with negativity. The cranky feminist college graduate who never lets a sexist assumption slide. The doctor who writes terrible medical thrillers about heroic doctors; nerdy boy-men who write children's lit; guys who are there to pick up chicks. (Okay, that last one is a pretty rare beast in fandom.)

The central character is Amy Gallup, who was once a successful author, and now makes ends meet editing pieces for Who's Who and teaching these classes. She's a wonderful character -- introspective, misanthropic, a keen observer who is drawn into the mystery against her will. Without Amy, this would be a far weaker novel.

The plot is hung together with bits of string, but that hardly matters. I loved this for the characters. Three thumbs up.