Contact

About the publication, and how to reach us.

Miscellany of Fiction is a small online publication of book reviews and chapter-by-chapter summaries. One person writes everything here.

E. M. Larkin

Of this Miscellany, the sole Compiler

A private Reader, of no fixed Address, who undertakes these Notices upon Books from a small Room set aside for the Purpose.

Mr. Larkin (so called, though the Initials shall here suffice) has for many Years kept a Commonplace of his Reading, and is now persuaded — chiefly by the Encouragement of one or two Friends, and the Solitude of the Hours afforded by a Country Winter — to set down these Observations in a more publick Form. He pretends to no Learning beyond the ordinary, nor to any Acquaintance among the Authors here treated; the Notices contained herein are the Judgments of a private Person, freely offered, and not to be mistaken for Authority.

His chief Subjects are the modern Novel and Memoir, with such occasional Essays and Pieces in Verse as may engage his Attention. He confesses a Partiality for Sentences of some Length, for Authors but lately deceased or otherwise unfashionable, and for those Booksellers who still take the trouble to commend a Volume by their own Hand. He owns a settled Dislike of Cant in all its Forms, and of that Manner of Praise which speaks more of the Reviewer than of the Book.

Correspondence

For corrections of fact, recommendations, or violent disagreements with a review, write to larkin@miscellanyoffiction.com. Replies are not guaranteed but are usually attempted.

What We Cover

Fiction, chiefly. The occasional memoir or volume of essays. No pure self-help, and no reviews of books that weren't finished. Reviews are spoiler-light. Summaries on the Summaries page contain spoilers from beginning to end — that's the whole point of them.

How We Rate

Five stars is reserved for books I expect to reread and to press on strangers — books that succeed at what they attempt, where what they attempt is worth doing. Four means an excellent book with visible trade-offs; most good books live here, and a four from this desk is a recommendation, not a hedge. Three is a mixed achievement — real virtues, real problems, recommended with conditions. Two fails at most of what it attempts. One means I regret the hours. Every book is judged against its own ambitions, not against a league table of the genre.

Pitching

No outside pitches at present. The Reviews page lists every piece in the catalogue; the Archive is the place to dig.

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