Curious Attractions: Essays On Writing - Hardcover

Debra Spark is director of the Creative Writing Program at Colby College and author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint and The Ghost of Bridgetown. She has been a fellow at Yaddo and at the Bunting Institute, and a recipient of a grant from the NEA.

One of the many loaded questions Spark poses is, Why is there so little "happy fiction"? Readers may ask, how much fun can a book about writing fiction be? The answer: a whole lot with Spark as your guide. An adventurous novelist and an experienced teacher, she takes a personal, anecdotal approach to the challenge of creating fiction, lacing her illuminating essays with provocative quotes from writers as varied as Raymond Carver and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Spark writes about where stories come from, why openings and closings are so difficult to pull off, what we mean by style, the difference between sentiment and sentimentality, and how magic realism fares in North America. Her lines of inquiry are significant. Her observations about craft are fluent. And her ability to both analyze fiction and respect its mystery makes for a suitably frank and bemused perspective backed by unabashed wonder at the workings of the imagination and the undeniable power of literature. Spark's canny essays are a pleasure for readers and writers alike. Donna Seaman
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