A review by wanderer222
The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by Robert Boswell

4.0

There is some good writing advice here, despite the lack of diversity in the examples used. You can tell the age of the author by the over-reliance on cannonical works--the usual suspects such as Melville, O'Connor, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. Indeed, this book is very much written like an old-school English professor wrote it--it veers more academic than something suitable for a popular audience. The prose might be too dense/analytic for someone just starting out as a writer, or someone without a degree in English (being honest). That said, I think it could be helpful for well-read writers who are hoping to "level up" their game--by thinking about what really works in what we consider "great" works of literature, or why great works of literature are "great," at all. The concept of the "half-known world" was quite interesting and helpful to my own approach to writing fiction.