Book Review: How to Draw a Novel by Martin Solares

Novels, more than any other narrative artform, take you on a long journey—a transformative one that passes through extensive imaginary and lawless landscapes. They demand your commitment and compel you to bear it till the end, fluttering and oscillating according to its rhythm, making your emotions dance to its tunes. According to Milan Kundera, Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, written in the sixteenth century, started it all, followed by Cervantes with Don Quixote. Novels were historically considered a rebellious, mutinous art form. They always refused to conform to any directives, regulations, or jurisdictions imposed by hegemonic authority.

But till the end of the nineteenth century, novels were largely confined by the limitations of space and time and adhered to a descriptive style. Twentieth-century novels broke these chains, and novelists started to explore new frontiers. The plot lost its prominence to style and structure. Modern novelists tried to rein in their impulse to describe the scenes and spoon-feed the readers, always striving for innovative means to convey the purpose in as few words as possible. Novels followed the breakout of poetry from the confines of rhyme and rhythm.

In his collection of essays titled How to Draw a Novel, Mexican writer and publisher Martin Solares explores the narration, craft, and structure of novels. Along with essays that detail different aspects of the construction of a good novel, they also contain drawings that represent the flow of many famous and popular novels, which helps us understand the methods used by their authors in their creation and also helps us realise why we found them great after reading. The book was first published in 2014 in Mexico in Spanish, and its English translation, done by Heather Cleary, is scheduled for publication. I received an advanced copy of the book from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, through Netgalley in exchange for honest feedback.

The book is composed of twenty short essays and numerous line drawings. Each essay elaborates on an important aspect of the creation of a great novel. Most of them are accompanied by drawings that further clarify how different authors practically tackled them and created masterpieces. Along with many reputed European and American novels, Solares introduces numerous novels and writers from Latin America and Mexico through these essays. This is the most tempting aspect of the book—you get a taste of books from totally strange novelists, most of whom I don't think are even translated into English.

As mentioned, Solares discusses different pertinent aspects of novels that greatly impact their valuation. Using several examples, he illuminates the process of developing a protagonist(s), the importance of a title and a beginning that are essential to capturing the reader's attention, and ways to end a story that make the reader remember the novel for the rest of their lives. He uses pictures to deconstruct the building style of different novels. For example, he demonstrates the evolution of novels from rather simple stories that are adorned with detailed descriptions into complex machinations that rewrite the concept of reality by breaking out of space or time.

The writer then explains how different inanimate things can be used to create meaning inside the reader's mind while reading a novel. In another essay, he explains the reason why in the novel Moby-Dick, there are long pauses in the narration, only to describe the nitty gritties of whaling and how The Catcher in the Rye stops the motion of time and defies the natural laws. We find a detailed analysis of the structure of crime fiction and the characterization of various detectives. Among other essays, we find an interesting and affectionate discussion on the form and structure of Pedro Paramo.

How to Draw a Novel by Martin Solares is a collection of poetic and evocative writings on one of the most modern narrative arts—the novel. He uses visual representations that can convey how a novel is structured and the crests and troughs in the narration. This book can enhance the reader's affection for novels, improve their understanding of them, and alter the novel reading experience to a better one.