What Makes a Novel Memorable?

By Kathleen McCleary  |  April 19, 2017  | 

Flickr Creative Commons: Karoly Czifra

Recently I was in a bookstore looking for something to read on an airplane. (Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colo., just so you know. Don’t want a miss the chance to give a shout-out to an indie.) I idly picked up a novel from the table at the front of the store, and read these blurbs:

“…something rarer than a great novel—this is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, it takes your breath away.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Once in a while, a novel comes along so remarkable in its quality that it stands out not only as an example of what well-written fiction should be, but also as a satisfying reading experience all by itself…one of the most extraordinarily fine novels published in the past fifty years.”—The Dallas Morning News

“In over 80,000 words there is not a single superfluous phrase. Every sentence is crafted with delicacy and necessity.”—South Mississippi Sun Herald

Well, heck. Of course I bought it and read it. The book is STONER, by John Williams, first published in 1965. At heart, it’s a story about a farm boy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. The main character, William Stoner, is fairly passive; his marriage is lonely; he becomes estranged from his only child, who has a sad life of her own. So what is it about this book?

I found it riveting and couldn’t put it down. My mother found it unbearably sad. People I know who have read it have alternately called it “depressing” or “beautiful” or “depressing and beautiful.” But it’s a great book. And the things that make it great, I believe, are key elements that every writer can learn from and strive for:

The writing is simple and straightforward. Early on, Williams writes: “In the evenings the three of them sat in the small kitchen lighted by a single kerosene lamp, staring into the yellow flame; often during the hour or so between supper and bed, the only sound that could be heard was the weary movement of a body in a straight chair and the soft creak of a timber giving a little beneath the age of the house.” A single sentence, yet it conveys the loneliness and bone-crushing fatigue of the small family’s life on a farm in Missouri just before World War I. All of the writing, including the dialogue, is economical but evocative. It’s a good goal to aim for.

The setting feels real. The entire novel takes place on the campus of the University of Missouri. The university comes alive almost as a breathing entity—with the excitement of a shared love of learning, the stifling dictates of academia, the petty rivalries and jealousies, the genuine friendships. The time period (during and after WWI), the large columned buildings with their marble stairs, the dull grayness of a mid-western winter—it’s all there, drawing you in to Stoner’s world.

It has a great love story. Hey, there’s a reason romance novels are the best-selling genre in fiction. People love love stories. And STONER contains an impossible, beautiful, intense, memorable love story. “They were both very shy, and they knew each other slowly, tentatively; they came close and drew apart, they touched and withdrew, neither wishing to impose upon the other more than might be welcomed. Day by day the layers of reserve that protected them dropped away, so that at last they were like many who are extraordinarily shy, each open to the other, unprotected, perfectly and unselfconsciously at ease.” And there’s a nice frisson of sex, too.

The characters are individuals. These are not stock characters. They are unique individuals who feel intrinsic to the story, the setting, and the main character. The antagonist is a brilliant, handsome, arrogant, man with numerous physical deformities; the love of Stoner’s life is a smart, serious, intense young woman who is also playful and warm and wise beyond her years. And Stoner is a character who learns, grows, recedes, and evolves over the course of the novel to become fully himself, in ways that surprise both him and the reader. “In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”

It tells the entire arc of a life. I have written three novels, and only one of them contained a character’s entire life story from beginning to end. And yet, I think it’s my best, most interesting book. It’s human nature to want to know how stories turn out, not just the slice of life often presented in a novel, but the whole story, the arc of a person’s life from beginning to end. Obviously different stories call for different treatments, but there is something compelling and satisfying about knowing a character from birth to death.

STONER isn’t a book everyone will love. But it’s an impeccably written book that everyone can learn something from.

What are the best lessons you’ve learned from a great novel?

[coffee]

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17 Comments

  1. Donald Maass on April 19, 2017 at 9:55 am

    There are many more things we might discover about Williams’s novel, I’m sure, but this morning there’s a word you used that stands out to me: “impossible”.

    You say that of the romance in the story, but when we talk about what makes fiction memorable we often mean that which causes us to feel awe, and what provokes awe is when what seems impossible actually happens.

    I’m also struck by your assessment of the prose: simple and straightforward. The language is plain and unadorned, yes, but it the passage you quote also collapses and summarizes the family’s situation.

    Much fiction today does the opposite. It plays out scenes with every possible nuance, leaving out nothing that the close POV character might think, feel, observe or wonder. It’s exhausting.

    Williams works with narrative efficiency, using key details (the farmhouse evening silence, say) to tell us just enough of what we need to know. He sketches in rather than stretches out.

    We have lost the art of summary. Look also at the passage you cite that portrays the slow, tentative push-pull of a new romantic relationship. In real time, how long did that take? Weeks? Months? Williams collapses that into two sentences. He is able to summarize.

    I’m sensing in some recent posts here on WU, including today’s, including some of mine, a frustration and impatience with certain contemporary modes of narration. Are we are longing for the punch, grip and efficiency of mid-20th Century novels? Are we newly admiring old stories which cause us to sink in despair and then soar in hope? Is the summary which is made possible by omniscient narration newly refreshing?

    I’m beginning to think so. Very much enjoyed this post, Kathleen. Kudos to you for picking up a fifty-year-old novel at an independent bookstore. How old-fashioned. What a new trend.



    • Kathleen McCleary on April 19, 2017 at 3:52 pm

      Thank you, Don, for adding more insight into what I was trying to say. For me, there is enormous appeal in exactly those things you mention, narrative efficiency, enough information but not an overload of info, etc. Thanks for your very thoughtful, very smart comment. You’ve give me more to think about!



    • Luna Saint Claire on November 28, 2017 at 12:37 pm

      I am running out to get Stoner right now. I write in third person. Every day I read Hemingway. Jim Harrison and Paul Auster. And I have been reading all the Russians – Anna Karenina and Crime & Punishment have been helpful.



  2. Will (that Other Hahn) on April 19, 2017 at 10:50 am

    OK, so I only looked because it was you Kathleen: time has been at a premium, but I know my self-interest when I see it. Yet when you mentioned yet another book set in the Alleged Real World, I almost gave up because I could hear the incoming humiliation like a V2 buzz-bomb. Epic fantasy author, comparing to a lit-fic bestseller? This can’t end well. But I stuck with it, because I’m getting stubborn at my age I guess. And because you.

    Sure enough: Simple, Straightforward Writing? Dear Lord, no, my tales lie at the epicenter of that gaping black hole known as purple prose. Setting Feels Real, perhaps it’s best I pass over this in mercy. No objection to Love Story… but I couldn’t say I’ve really had any. Characters are Individuals, hey there’s a good one! I’m on board with that. And the entire Arc? In one book? Hem, I’m afraid that feeds back into the simple writing and the (allegedly) real place. No can do, too much of a load pulling back the curtain on an entire world to give more than a glimpse of the lives within.

    Good thing I get to write long books. Eighty thousand words, hah! Where’s the other half?

    What’s really cool (though maybe obvious) is your discovery method. A real-world bookstore, and not Amazon’s recommendation engine. Wow! Now that’s the way to do it, congrats.



    • Kathleen McCleary on April 19, 2017 at 4:27 pm

      A setting doesn’t have to be real world to FEEL real, Will. And you can tell the entire arc of the lives of some characters, even in glimpses, through flashbacks as well as present scenes. I find terrific lessons in fantasy fiction and science fiction and even dystopian fiction and YA fiction for my “real world” stories. It’s all about believability and drawing the reader in to something that feels so real, everything else falls away. Love your enthusiasm!



  3. Mary Kate on April 19, 2017 at 11:18 am

    This does sound lovely. For me, a well-loved novel comes down to three things: character, writing, and tension. I need characters who feel like real people for whom I care deeply, I need good prose, and I need a nagging question to be answered that propels me through the story. My favorite novels are somewhat diverse; among them are Tana French’s first two novels, In the Woods and The Likeness, The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series, and of course, Harry Potter (some books are better than others, I will admit.) Very different, yet they all have those three things in common. From these books I’ve learned a tremendous amount, but most of all to focus on those three things when I draft above all else.



    • Kathleen McCleary on April 19, 2017 at 4:29 pm

      I love the way you have homed in on the things that make a book resonant, Mary Kate. I agree with all three! I find that I especially need to care deeply about at least one of the characters, and the writing needs to be so good that I don’t notice the writing—I’m just caught up in the story. I loved THE BOOK THIEF and all the HARRY POTTER books—I may have to try Patrick Ness! Thanks for your thoughts, and the recommendations.



  4. barryknister on April 19, 2017 at 12:27 pm

    Kathleen, thank you for this post. On your recommendation, I may well read Stoner, although today’s audience is likely to assume all the wrong things from the title.
    But I have to add this: John Williams’ novel may (or may not) be the lucky recipient of savvy marketing. In ’65 (as well as now), a book succeeded as a result of several factors, among them shrewd marketing and lucky timing. I’m not doubting your assessment, or the novel’s quality, only pointing out how such a book might not have succeeded at all, had its timing and marketing been off.
    But that said, different strokes for different folks–different books for different readers. If many passages occur in Stoner like the one you quote, in which three people sit nightly at a table and stare for an hour at a kerosene lantern, I’m afraid I would soon begin to think uncooperative, skeptical thoughts.



    • David A. on April 19, 2017 at 4:16 pm

      Personally, I’d settle for three people sitting at a table and staring for an hour at a kerosene lantern – provided one of them gets murdered at the end of it!



    • Kathleen McCleary on April 19, 2017 at 4:33 pm

      Thanks for your comments, Barry. I don’t know that STONER was successfully marketed—as we all know, critical acclaim doesn’t always translate into commercial success. Fortunately, there’s only ONE scene in STONER, the single sentence I quoted, in which people stare at a lantern for an hour. To me that’s the beauty of it. You don’t need more than a sentence to understand how dull and repetitive and wearying those lives are. That said, David’s idea of having three people sit in silence for an hour before one of them gets murdered would certainly make an attention-grabbing opener for a novel. ;-)



      • barryknister on April 19, 2017 at 5:56 pm

        Kathleen–thanks for your reply. What I meant about the staring-at-a-lantern-for-an-hour quote is this: rather than successfully summarizing or encapsulating a life of tedium and repetition for me, it seems a bit rigged. Tired, bored or discouraged, can you imagine yourself being one of these three people? For an hour? Staring at a kerosene lamp? I can’t, but as I say, different books for different readers. As for David’s comment, after an hour I can see one of the three shooting himself, but that would put us in comic-novel territory, and it doesn’t sound as though that would fit the mood of Stoner.



  5. Naomi Canale on April 19, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    Thank you, Kathleen. A story that unfolds over an entire lifetime sounds like a wonderful read. I haven’t stumbled across many written in the 20th, or even the 21st century, but I do love it when I find one told well. It takes a true wordsmith to write an entire arc of a life well. It’s probably why I love the classics so much…Great Expectations, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Years…

    It’s funny, I just wrote an essay on Markus Zusak’s The Book Theif, that book, for me, is very memorable and will stay with me for a lifetime. Even though it’s not told over an entire lifetime, it’s one of clarity and simplicity, yet raw and unimaginable.

    I can’t wait to read Stoner. Thank you for the recommendation. Cheers!



  6. Kathleen McCleary on April 19, 2017 at 4:33 pm

    Thanks. I loved THE BOOK THIEF too.



  7. Carol Dougherty on April 19, 2017 at 6:55 pm

    Kathleen, I remember the first time I saw Chekov onstage, instead of on the page. In the play, the actors were playing characters who were bored (to my unsophisticated eyes), yet were not boring. It was a revelation. You’ve inspired me to read STONER for sure.

    Thank you!



  8. Kenneth Pennington on April 19, 2017 at 11:12 pm

    I read the book and was impressed. Not what I expected but I learned a great deal.



  9. Mary Aalgaard on April 20, 2017 at 8:53 am

    Excellent review and commentary on the craft of writing. It gives me things to think about as I develop characters. Also, what makes a novel worth reading and sharing with a friend. I’m currently listening to the audiobook “The Return of the Native” written by Thomas Hardy and read by the marvelous Alan Rickman. It has similar elements.



  10. Barbara Morrison on April 26, 2017 at 1:57 pm

    Stoner is one of my favorite books and one I am always recommending to people. My local indie recommended it soon after it was reissued. I had my book club read it, and even now, eight years later, it is one of the first mentioned when we talk about books we’ve read and loved. It was one of the rare times we all agreed about a book.

    I hadn’t thought about Williams’s economy, though of course that’s true. I loved the depth and complexity beneath the apparently simple prose, and what that said about Stoner himself and his unspectacular life. I think now, reading Donald Maass’s latest book, that what made the book memorable was the power of huge emotions bulding behind the ordinary language and life.