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Perhaps the word ‘reading’ itself is the problem. Strictly speaking, reading is something you can either do or not do, and it’s not terribly difficult. We say that novels by Proust or Pynchon are ‘difficult reads’, but in fact a child of ten could read them: he or she just wouldn’t understand them. Serious readers use the word ‘reading’ as a metonym, to signify the whole process of consumption and comprehension. It is this broader sense that the author has in mind.
How to Read a Novel aims to enhance the reading process for non-specialist readers without drowning them in arcana. Sutherland gives a succinct description of intertextuality, citing as examples the echoes of Howards End in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and the many Greek allusions in Joyce’s description of the sea in Ulysses. One can miss these references and still enjoy the books, but much more will be absorbed if they are understood. He also covers the importance of viewing a novel in the context of when it was written, the merits of re-reading — you lose the element of surprise, but are more alert to symbolism — and the clash between the real world and the fictional. On the latter he cites the way that Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes ‘skims across the fact-fiction border’; one might also note the way in which another of Barnes’s works, A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters, skims across the border between the novel and the short-story collection: it is hard to say what exactly a novel is, and Sutherland, perhaps wisely, refuses an attempt.
Despite the title, equal space is given to two other areas. The first is how to choose a novel in these days of disorientating overabundance, when 10,000 new titles are published annually, compared with 300 two centuries ago. Here we are given several hints on interpreting hubris, packaging and bestseller lists. The second is why to read novels. Sutherland leans towards fiction’s capacity to act as educator and moral guide; through fiction we witness the lives of characters across continents and through ages, and we are introduced to ideas — often incandescently brilliant ones — of which we might otherwise have been ignorant. One can also, just by reflecting on a fictional question (say, whether Heathcliff was a scoundrel or a hero) formulate an entire intellectual position (in that example, on whether an unfortunate past justifies dreadful behaviour in the present).
Finally, in this entertaining basic introduction to novels, Sutherland quite rightly reminds us that, as well as making us wiser, novels also make us happier. That, as much as any other reason, is why so many of us huddle over them all our lives, from childhood days when we shine an illicit torch upon them in the night to the mornings, years later, when we cleave to them on crowded trains. The subtitle, ‘A User’s Guide’, is suddenly double-edged. Fiction is a salutary drug; we are its users.
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