A quirky, playful addition to the well-populated subgenre of fiction writers writing about writing fiction.
The (graphic) art of fiction.
In a variation on diagramming sentences, Mexican novelist Solares, author of Don’t Send Flowers and The Black Minutes, encourages aspiring novelists to draw their stories. “Of all the ghosts that inhabit the novel, structure is one of the most elusive,” he writes. “It is also the most exquisite.” In the author’s estimation, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a looped line rising to a heart and descending to an arrow; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an upward sloping line with stitches along its length. These drawings—more like squiggles—are meant to represent the story’s basic turning points, plot lines, atmosphere, and characters. The promise is that they will help authors to identify their novel’s core sensibility. As Solares writes, we must “ask ourselves where the truth lies.” When in doubt, simplify and do it visually, pen to paper. The author illustrates his advice with examples from North American, English, European, and Latin American authors. He also addresses themes common in how-to books on creative writing: character, beginnings, endings, titles, time, structure, and creating excitement and tension. A drawing of this book would be a jagged, discontinuous, wandering line. Solares strays from advice-giving to defend the novel against insults, consider the possibility of the perfect novel (candidates include Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace), relate a dream about being devoured by lions, compare the initial sketch to the draft to the final version of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, and provide timelines for the novel’s evolution, each novel with its own drawing. Like all such books, the value and the pleasure come as much from spending time with the author’s likes and dislikes as the practical guidance being offered.
A quirky, playful addition to the well-populated subgenre of fiction writers writing about writing fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780802159304
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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