What Are Takeaways?

Takeaways are a series of posts looking at various novels and authors of note to discuss aspects of craft that make them interesting. They are not reviews, synopses, or traditional “book reports.” They do not provide more than the merest gist of what a book is about or what happens in it. In fact, they assume you have already read or intend to read the books in question. Takeaways posts merely give pointers on technique or other characteristics that we should watch for as writers when we read a book or author, in case we should find them useful in our own work.

I’m beginning this series of Takeaways posts with novels from the dawn of postmodern fiction some sixty years ago because they’re still relevant and instructive, but don’t worry—I’ll be bringing in recent novels as I’m able to work through my backlog. And these scribblings are not meant to be of scholarly quality by any stretch; they’re simply casual observations along the way.