What makes a story a story? What is style? What's the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers inHow Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely--from Homer to David Foster Wallace, fromWhat Maisie KnewtoMake Way for Ducklings--Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step.The result is nothing less than a philosophy of the novel--plainspoken, funny, blunt--in the traditions of E. M. Forster'sAspects of the Noveland Strunk and White'sThe Elements of Style. It sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision. It will change the way you read.