Review: How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner

Overview:

In the spirit of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project comes a hilarious and heartfelt story of an aspiring author trying to rescue her single-mother family by writing the next Great American Novel.

 

Aristotle "Aris" Thibodeau is 12.5 years old and destined for glory. Unfortunately, after her father's death, she finds herself plopped down in Kanuga, Georgia, where she has to manage her mother Diane's floundering love life and dubious commitment to her job as an English professor. Not to mention, co-parenting a little brother who hogs all the therapy money.

Luckily, Aris has a plan. Following the advice laid out Write a Novel in Thirty Days! she sets out to pen a bestseller using her charmingly dysfunctional family as material. If the Mom-character, Diane, would ditch online dating and accept that the perfect man is clearly the handyman/nanny-character, Penn MacGuffin, Aris would have the essential romance for her plot (and a father in her real life). But when a random accident uncovers a dark part of Thibodeau family history, Aris is forced to confront the fact that sometimes in life—as in great literature—things might not work out exactly as planned.

 

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Review:

 

How to Write a Novel chronicles family life as experience (and told) by 12.5 year Aristotle (Aris). Aris, her younger brother Max, and mom Diane, are still working through life after the loss of family patriarch, Joe.  Aris is precocious, funny, and smart.  When she's not co-parenting her little brother, she's hard at work trying to find a suitable match for Diane.

I found this coming of age story at turns heart breaking, hopeful, and funny. This is the perfect book for fans of Marie Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I highly recommend How to Write a Novel and can't wait for Melanie Sumner's next work.