Novels About Novelists

“The night I watch Athena die, we’re celebrating her TV deal with Netflix." I’m a first-line junkie, and the above from Yellowface checks that box for me—and so much more. * Writers writing about writing: Check. * Extraordinary close, intimate voice: Check. * Send-up of publishing: Check. * Look inside the squirmiest side of white privilege: Check. Plus, the ‘gotta know’ that keeps one up well past bedtime. Plus, you want to re-read this book the moment you finish.

Page-whipping layered with psychological insight, this book refuses to be put down. Publisher’s Weekly said: “A writer held hostage by his self-proclaimed “number-one fan, is unadulterated terrifying. Paul Sheldon, a writer of historical romances, is in a car accident; rescued by nurse Annie Wilkes, he slowly realizes that salvation can be worse than death.”

This broad satire of Pete Tarslow, a lost soul who sets out to write a novel to impress the woman who dumped him, somehow meets what seems like disparate goals by portraying a character who is a naïf attempting to be Machiavellian. Hely skewers self-importance with a broad brush in this fast and funny read. A Sunday on the couch all-day read.

All of Morton’s novels reveal the soul of an insecure writer in their quirks, foibles, and often unattractive hunger—though never callously. It’s hard for me to pick just one of this author’s books, but I found it most memorable for the story of how far a writer might go to gain glory and what life might be as the wife, daughter, or friend of such a writer.

ate up this Shakespearean ‘all’s well that ends well’ satire, described as “a long overdue retelling of New Grub Street—George Gissing’s classic satire of the Victorian literary marketplace—Grub chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a group of young novelists living in and around New York City.” This book reminds writers to watch the hubris and check literary attitudes at the door, but it does it with tender love and great humor.