The Fiction Class by Susan Breen

This is another book picked up cheap at Borders. I was trying to find something that departs from my usual interest in book reading. So while this book had no adventure and historical qualities that I am drawn to repeatedly, it had something else. A very good story. I felt emotions that make you know you have read a book that involved you. Like frustration, happiness, crying, surprise, and satisfaction.

I loved this book. It kept me drawn to it as I learned more about all the characters, commiseration of dealing with a difficult person, and of course the ever present love interest. Sorry, but you just have to have some sort of love story! While the love interest does not over power the main story thread I was happy to see one in the book. Mostly I think because I wasn't really expecting one from the back cover.

On paper, Arabella Hicks is more than qualified to teach a weekly fiction class on New York's Upper West Side: She's an author herself; she's passionate about books; she's even named after the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel.

So why do her students seem so difficult? And why can't she find an ending to the novel she has been working on for seven years? Arabella's beginning to suspect that it's all because her mother, Vera Hicks, is driving her insane. After each class, she goes to see Vera in a nursing home outside the city. Every visit turns into an argument. Arabella can't figure out how to make peace, until one day she discovers something surprising: Her mother wants to be a writer.

Slowly, cautiously, Arabella begins to teach her, and as the lessons progress along with her class, Arabella discovers that it is she who has a lot to learn about writing, and about love.