I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I love books that give you space to climb inside there. And you have to run to keep up in places, and you have to fill in a lot of blanks yourself. So it almost becomes your story.
The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.
The book is there for inspiration and as a foundation, the fundamentals on which to build.
'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.
I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.
I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.
Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.
A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.