Library Journal
As both a novelist and academic critic, Lodge brings a special insight into the theory and practice of narrative fiction. Here he collects 13 previously published essays that use or discuss the theories of the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin as a way of understanding and justifying the novel. Lodge suggests that the notion of dialog and the poetics of narrative provide more insight into the essence of the novel than the traditional categories of character and plot. He applies these to a number of novels, including those of George Eliot and Jane Austen, as well as the more recent work of Fay Weldon and Milan Kundera. Lodge's essays are both lucid and insightful. Recommended.-- T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.