The Grounds of the Novel is a deep and innovative book that uses novels to pose questions often left to metaphysics. By grounds, Daniel Wright refers to something upon which the world of the novel depends. He invites us to think about how readers first orient themselves spatially in different novels or pieces of writing. How do novelists signal what lies just outside the limits of their fictional worlds? Wright is particularly interested in early scenes that establish the spatial dimensions of a novel. Certain moments and metaphors “lay the ground of the novel, by positioning it from the outset in relation to the darkness, blackness, or emptiness that lies beyond” (p. 83). He tracks passages involving earth, spaces beneath, and foundations in novels and novel theory that include Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground...

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