On Beevor and books on war
- February 28th, 2010
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I am a fan of books on war. There. I’ve said it. Actually I haven’t read many since I was about fifteen years old, but I am still partial to a browse in the Military section of the bookshop every now and then. Which might be rather strange for a committed pacifist who believes that there must always be a better alternative to sending in the soldiers. But there’s something about a war story … Read more
When does a short story become a novel? I’m not looking for an answer like “when it’s a novella” or one that involves numbers of pages or words. Rather, I’m interested in process: how an idea for a story, a story that could fill say five or ten thousand words (well within the classic definition of a short story), might be “stretched” into novel-length. Can we tell when this has happened? Can we point at a place in the text and say “there, that’s where it happened”?
There are some books, not many, that you want to carry on reading, long after the final page. It might be the setting or the theme that you love. Perhaps it’s the main character, someone you admire and long to travel further alongside. It might be the quality of the language. Usually, in a good book, all of these are present in some form, but when you reach the end, you’re glad. It’s been a great journey, but it’s time to move on.