FICTION
Willett asks more than whodunit
Jincy Willett has written a terrifically engrossing page-turner, a comic thriller that is likely to be one of the great reads of the summer of 2008.
“The Writing Class” is both charming and caustic, a literate — and literary — whodunit.
Amy Gallup is a reclusive author, one who found early critical success, but limited commercial success. She stopped writing after the death of her first husband and, after a brief loveless marriage that ended in divorce, Amy is living like a hermit, growing older and fatter with her moody basset hound as her only companion.
Amy’s lone human interaction is with the writing class she teaches at the local university. Every semester, a new batch of would-be Hemingways, Palahniuks, Steeles and Kings comes in, and Amy tries to politely teach them how they can improve their hapless short stories and manuscripts. Show, don’t tell; avoid exposition through dialogue; all the rote rules of writing she regularly recites. The students come from all walks of life, but they all share an all-consuming need to have their work published somewhere, no matter how obscure the publication.
Amy’s latest class is another mix of personalities: the snooty doctor writing a hokey action novel, the obese repeat-student who signs up every semester, the pretty girl with a chip on her shoulder, the classy lady, the criminal defense attorney. Some have marginal talent, others are hopeless cases. One or two may have only taken the class to see if they could meet some other singles.
To Amy’s surprise, the class is enthusiastic and willing to give intelligent and thoughtful feedback to each other’s work. They may not necessarily be the most talented class, but this group seems to have a special chemistry that excites the teacher.
But there’s a sadist in the class. An anonymous student is making threatening late night calls to Amy, and writing hurtful, obscene and menacing comments on other’s student’s stories. The pranks escalate until the university is forced to cancel the class, but the students beg Amy to continue meeting socially. When one of the students ends up dead, it becomes clear that the so-called class sniper is more dangerous than anyone could have known.
Being a group of aspiring writers, the class is compelled to continue meeting. After all, every writer searches for some kind of resolution — what good is a mystery if it doesn’t all become clear in the penultimate chapter (saving room for the epilogue, of course)?
Willett’s premise is terrific because the nature of the setting presents unlimited possibilities. Amy is trying to teach her students to write convincing fiction — essentially teaching them how to tell lies. The only clues the killer in their midst has left are written words. The taunting notes and e-mails the “sniper” crafts belie an educated, Machiavellian sadist. Could the writer of those well-crafted messages be the quiet guy who wrote the awful sci-fistory, or the feminist who wrote the limp and languid snoozer about the jilted lover?
Is the entire book a writing exercise about an unreliable narrator, or is someone simply exploiting traditional mystery novel conventions to force the class to suspect the most stereotypical of suspects?
If everyone is trying to make up a story, is there anything you can actually believe?
“The Writing Class” works because Willett has managed to make each of the students likable in their own way. You can see why the group wants to continue even when a killer is apparently in their midst because, as a reader, you have effectively been pulled into the class. Anyone who enjoys reading books has probably daydreamed about having their work published, and it’s easy to find yourself in one of these would-be writers with stars in their eyes.
Willett does a tremendous job of being a chameleon, including stories ostensibly written by each of her characters as well as the sniper, convincingly changing her word usage, tone and style to reflect each writer. These writing samples are how we come to understand each character, and they provide a wonderful, unspoken subtext in character development, which may or may not be clues to the killer’s identity.
Willett has also created an endearing protagonist in Amy, a woman who is haunted, heavy (both in heart and in body) and consigned to a loner’s life. The class — and the killer — are pulling her from a dark and lonely corner and forcing her to come to grips with life — and death.
“The Writing Class” is alternately funny, sweet and suspenseful. It’s a mystery written for book lovers, and books like this are what caused book lovers to fall in love with books in the first place.
The Writing Class
By Jincy Willett
St. Martin’s Press
336 pages, $24.95
Dan Murphy is a Buffalo freelance critic.
