essay novel example

Novel - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. Essays might discuss the evolution of the novel as a literary form, analyze specific novels or authors, explore themes and stylistic features of novels, or discuss the impact of novels on society and culture. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Novel you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Winston against the Party in the Novel 1984

In 1984, the main character, Winston Smith goes through moments where he is in need; His needs consist of physiological needs, safety, and security needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. Winston is the main character in his novel it follows his around during this time. In 1984 Winston has his physiological met. These physiological needs include; water, pleasure, and food. Winston had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in pale-colored gravy that dribbled across the […]

How does Jack Represent Savagery in the Novel?

In the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the character, Jack, symbolizes evilness and savagery. At the beginning of the story, Jack manipulates the reader into thinking that he is a good character. This is shown when he volunteers to lead the group of boys. However, on the contrary, Jack portrays evilness throughout the book in many scenes such as when he kills the pig, chants the phrase "'Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood. and […]

The Alchemist and the Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

Literature is the mirror of the society. Literature writers always reflect the social, economic, political and cultural realities in the society and captures the same is their artistic expressions. It is on this basis the literature is the mirror of the society. Paulo Coelho in the novel The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage fundamentally offers inspiration to people to always follow their dream regardless of the circumstances that they go through. The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage are a compelling novels by […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Montag and Clarisse in the Novel Fahrenheit 451

Individuals can change because of the impact of others. The book, "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury was about a firefighter name Guy Montag. Montag does the inverse from what a standard firefighter does. He starts fires as opposed to putting them out. In Fahrenheit 451 books are not normal to see and in the event that somebody is seen reading a book, the firefighters burn their homes. Rather than reading books, their society watches a lot of TV and tunes […]

The Problems in the Novel Fahrenheit 451

In the novel Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury, which is a dystopian fiction book, illustrates how the society in which the story is portrayed in turns to chaos. The citizens of the society become afraid of the people who they should trust to keep them safe, which are the firefighters, because they burn any books that they come in contact with. In the ending of Part 1 of the book, Captain Beatty tells Guy Montag about the history and […]

Deviations of the Hero’s Journey

In the realm of literature, various works are associated with Christopher Vogler and Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey. According to Campbell, a hero’s journey commences when a character departs his home, also known as his ordinary world, to navigate to an obscure world. Campbell is acknowledged to be the founder of the hero’s journey archetype. The hero endures and conquers difficulties in the process, which in return makes him stronger. He learns from his previous mistakes and establishes […]

Analysis of a Dystopian Novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Introduction Fahrenheit 451 is a book set in the 24th century written by Ray Bradbury which tells the story of Guy Montag who is a fireman. The book explores a dystopian world where firemen work to start fires and burn books. Dystopia is a word that is used to refer to the opposite of Utopia. Hence, it represents a world that is terrible in all ways imaginable. A dystopian novel, therefore, portrays a disastrous future. In this book, the protagonist […]

The Novel “The Namesake” and Gogol Ganguli

The novel "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri, exquisitely captures the life events of a certain Bengali immigrant family, the Ganguli's. The Novel captures the cultural and ethnic dilemmas that are placed upon Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli by the norms of American culture. This predicament is transferred to their first child Gogol. Gogol Ganguli is raised between the norms of American and Bengali cultural tendencies. This exposure and way of life have implemented a mental tug of war on which he […]

Expressing Feminism in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Background Information Jane Austen was an English novelist born in Hampshire, South of England on 16th December in 1775. She was very close to Cassandra, her sister. When together, the two would share a bedroom but when apart they would write to each other almost every. After Jane's death on 18th July 1817, her sister testified how the two loved each other, ""she was gilder of every pleasure, the sun of my life, and the soother of sorrow"" (Bendit 245). […]

Character Foil between Darcy and Wickham in the Novel Pride and Prejudice

In order for a reader to connect to the characters in a book and understand each of their individual qualities, authors decide to use characterization. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, she uses both direct and indirect characterization; this being, telling the reader exactly how she wants to portray a certain character, but also including characters who contrasts with other characters, most often the protagonist, in order to bring out certain qualities. This also known as character foil. One example […]

Okonkwo is the Legend of the Novel Things Fall Apart

Things fall apart is a disaster novel formed by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo, who is the legend of the novel and a champion among the most powerful men in the Ibo tribe routinely falls back on violence to make his centers appreciated. Down in his heart, Okonkwo is genuinely not a savage man, anyway his life is directed by his inside conflict, the fear of dissatisfaction and of inadequacy. Okonkwo made it a point in his life to isolate himself from […]

Socratic Seminar Slaughterhouse Five

How does the Vonneguts time shifting technique affect the understanding of the novel? Is there any advantage of structuring the slaughter house five in the teleporting manner? There is a linear story that emerges from the time shifting details of the novel. There is the story of Billy,? who makes his own way through time travel across the era of World War 2 toward the Dresden and show the scene of destruction. Whenever we came to the thread of the narrator, […]

Ready Player One: a Science-fiction Novel by Ernest Cline

The book Ready Player One is a science-fiction novel written by Ernest Cline. It was released in 2011 and became a New York Times bestseller. This post-apocalyptic like novel takes place in 2044, after the world has been struggling through economically hard times due to environmentally degradation. The only escape in this brutal world is a virtual reality video game called OASIS that lead character Wade Watts to use advance technology to fully engage himself within the game. The creator […]

Parallels between a Novel 1984 and Soviet Union

George Orwell is a politically charged author who writes novels as warning issued against the dangers of totalitarian societies. The novel is dystopian literature. A dystopian society is the not so good version of an utopian society which is pretty much a perfect world. While an utopian society IS a perfect world, a dystopian society is the exact opposite as it is dehumanizing and unpleasant in regards to trying to make everything ideal. The novel 1984 by George Orwell is […]

An Utopian Society in the Novel Animal Farm

Having power is something wanted by all, but it's sometimes it's the wrong people who obtain it. All around the world, signs are proving this to be true, even in literature. Classic novels which tend to address universal concerns such as too much power can change the way people view life. A classic novel such as Animal Farm which was written by George Orwell can portray how having too much power will eventually lead to the abuse of that power […]

George Orwell’s Fiction Novel 1984

With new technology and advanced programs, the government is gaining more power than one may realize. George Orwell’s fiction novel 1984, depicts Oceania’s control upon it’s party members thoughts and freedom showcasing the harsh effects that it had on its population. Too much control can often lead to social repression, Winston being a product of this repressed society. The cruelty Winston is faced with serves as both a motivation for him throughout the novel and reveals many hidden traits about […]

Multiple Points of View Paper

Anna Fitzgerald had a sister, Kate who besides having leukemia needed a kidney transplant. Anna is supposed to donate one of her kidneys to her sick sister, but apparently, she is already tired of donating organs to her. Anna did not just donate toys to her sister she also had on many instances donated blood and plasma to her in the past. Notably, Anna had been born out of a genetic engineering process which was purposely facilitated by her parents […]

A Political Novel 1984

1984 is a political novel composed for the humans below a totalitarian authorities and to give consciousness for the feasible dangers of it. George Orwell, the author, purposefully created the e book give emphasis to the rising of communism in Western countries who are nonetheless uncertain about how to approach it. He additionally wrote it due to having an insight of the horrendous lengths to which authoritarian governments that ought to possibly go beyond their power such as Spain and […]

Idyllic Society in the Novel Animal Farm

In the novel Animal Farm written by George Orwell is about how the animals attempt to create their own idyllic society which based on equality among the animals. The pigs create Animalism that all the animals have to follow and live by without going against it. First, the author describes the pigs as the "cleverest of the animal and they can easily take over the farm. Secondly, the pigs rely on rules they made together to keep the animals in […]

Main Theme in John Steinbeck’s Novel of Mice

In John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men George and Lennie work at a ranch in California. They work there for a couple of weeks until Lennie accidentally kills Curley's Wife. George then finds Lennie and kills him. Some of the characters on the ranch symbolizes loneliness. Steinbeck symbolizes loneliness through Candy, Crooks, George, and Curley's Wife. Candy represents loneliness through his missing hand and old dog. Candy's hand represents an old soulmate that is now gone. Candy's dog represents […]

The Color of Water a very Touching True Novel

The Color of Water written by James McBride was a very touching true novel about a son's perspective of his Jewish mother. Throughout the book James searches for his own placing in society as he passes through life. There are many hardships that he, his eleven other brothers and sisters and mother go through to get there, but in the end everything seems to justify means to how they got there and why events had happened in that particular way. […]

Edgar Allan Poe Themes and Styles

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, the child of two actors. He was then adopted by the Allan family after his father abandoned him and his mother passed away. Living in Virginia, he attended the University of Virginia for only one year, due to lack of money, and was recruited into the army by his father. His time in the army was short-lived, and he soon returned home. Soon after he married his thirteen-year-old […]

Have you Ever Read a John Steinbeck Novel?

His novels have made him very famous and also put Salinas, California on the map. His status has risen in Salinas as he promised. In this paper, I will be telling you about his life and why he was important. John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California which had a population of around 5,000 people at the time. His parents were John Steinbeck, a manager at Sperry flour mill, and Olive Hamilton, a school teacher. […]

The Kite Runner a Novel Full of Betrayals

The Kite Runner, author Khaled Hosseini is a novel full of betrayals and people seeking their redemptions. The novel is based off a major betrayal but is surrounded by other betrayals. The main character Amir betrayed his best friend Hassan and later in his life he tries to seek redemptions for past deeds. After twenty-six years, Amir returns to Afghanistan in order to redeem himself but falls short of acquiring full redemption. Amir cannot completely redeem himself due to watching […]

Dystopian Novel “Fahrenheit 451”

In the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, the government has taken measures to secure their utopian world. Things like having men going from house to house burning books because they think the knowledge in those books is dangerous to their cause. If anyone hears of someone with a book, they turn them in out of fear. The government brainwashed people into thinking books are bad, and nothing good can come out of them, just as Senator McCarthy did with Communists in […]

The Novel “Other Wes Moore”

The novel “Other Wes Moore” talks about the author moore tells the story about himself and the other Wes Moore. They were grown in a similar neighborhood, and both have spent a difficult time because of their father died when they were still young. They all have been through similar hardship. They used to be in similar crowds on similar street corners, they both had dealt with the police because of their unpleasant encounter with the police. With two similar […]

Theme of Redemption in the Kite Runner

It is only normal for humans to make mistakes, but it is how the mistakes are resolved that will dictate ones’ fate. In The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, he describes the life of a young boy named Amir whose mistake haunts him for years, and his journey to find a way to relieve the guilt he had to live with. The author demonstrates how guilt can physically and psychologically push a person to search for ways to redeem […]

The Great Gatsby: Movie and Novel Adaptations

When was the last time you read a book then watched the movie? How about the other way around? Have you ever read a play, then actually seen the play? And while watching it, you find yourself saying excitedly, ohh I think I have read this part in the book, but why is the movie different from what I imagined!. Well you are not alone.That is exactly how I felt after reading Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby. The […]

The Life of Gogul in the Novel the Namesake

In the novel The Namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri, we explore the life of Gogul and his parents as they assimilate into the world of the United States after his parents immigration from India. Throughout the novel we are introduced to various topics including immigration, assimilation and even prejudice. Lahiri laces these intricate topics into her story about a young Indian man's journey to balance both his Bengali and American lifestyles while also facing the obstacles of maturation and adulthood. […]

Loneliness in Kokoro Novel

Natsume Soseki wrote Kokoro towards the end of his life in the 1910s around the time of the death of Emperor Meiji. The novel is centered on three isolated thoughtful individuals, Sensei and the narrator who have moved to Tokyo from rural areas and the narrators father a lonely man who is having difficulties adjusting to modernization who remains in the family home in the countryside. Soseki depicts in fact a melancholic new world in which people are having difficulty […]

How to Write an Essay about a Novel – Step by Step Guide

Writing about literature used to scare the heck out of me. I really couldn’t wrap my mind around analyzing a novel. You have the story. You have the characters. But so what? I had no idea what to write.

Luckily, a brilliant professor I had as an undergrad taught me how to analyze a novel in an essay. I taught this process in the university and as a tutor for many years. It’s simple, and it works. And in this tutorial, I’ll show it to you. So, let’s go!

Writing an essay about a novel or any work of fiction is a 6-step process. Steps 1-3 are the analysis part. Steps 4-6 are the writing part.

Step 1. create a list of elements of the novel .

Ask yourself, “What are the elements of this book?”

Well, here is a list of elements present in any work of fiction, any novel:

Here is a table of literary elements along with their descriptions.

In this step, you simply pick 3-6 elements from the list I just gave you and arrange them as bullet points. You just want to make sure you pick elements that you are most familiar or comfortable with.

For example, you can create the following list:

This is just for you to capture the possibilities of what you can write about. It’s a very simple and quick step because I already gave you a list of elements.

Step 2. Pick 3 elements you are most comfortable with

In this step, we’ll use what I call The Power of Three . You don’t need more than three elements to write an excellent essay about a novel or a book.

Just pick three from the list you just created with which you are most familiar or that you understand the best. These will correspond to three sections in your essay.

If you’re an English major, you’ll be a lot more familiar with the term “metaphor” than if you major in Accounting.

But even if you’re a Math major, you are at least probably already familiar with what a story or a character is. And you’ve probably had a takeaway or a lesson from stories you’ve read or seen on screen.

Just pick what you can relate to most readily and easily.

For example, you can pick Characters , Symbols , and Takeaways . Great!

You Can Also Pick Examples of an Element

Let’s say that you are really unfamiliar with most of the elements. In that case, you can just pick one and then list three examples of it.

For example, you can pick the element of Characters . And now all you need to do is choose three of the most memorable characters. You can do this with many of the elements of a novel.

You can pick three themes , such as Romance, Envy, and Adultery.

You can pick three symbols , such as a rose, a ring, and a boat. These can represent love, marriage, and departure.

Okay, great job picking your elements or examples of them.

For the rest of this tutorial, I chose to write about a novel by Fedor Dostoyevskiy, The Brothers Karamazov. This will be our example.

It is one of the greatest novels ever written. And it’s a mystery novel, too, which makes it fun.

So now, let’s choose either three elements of this novel or three examples of an element. I find that one of the easiest ways to do this is to pick one element – Characters – and three examples of it.

In other words, I’m picking three characters. And the entire essay will be about these three characters.

Now, you may ask, if I write only about the characters, am I really writing an essay about the novel?

And the answer is, Yes. Because you can’t write about everything at once. You must pick something. Pick your battles.

And by doing that, you will have plenty of opportunities to make a statement about the whole novel. Does that make sense?

Just trust the process, and it will all become clear in the next steps.

Let’s pick the three brothers – Alexei, Dmitriy, and Ivan.

And don’t worry – I won’t assume that you have read the book. And I won’t spoil it for you if you’re planning to.

So we have the three brothers. We’re ready to move on to the next step.

Step 3. Identify a relationship among these elements

In this step, you want to think about how these three elements that you picked are related to one another.

In this particular case, the three brothers are obviously related because they are brothers. But I want you to dig deeper and see if there is perhaps a theme in the novel that may be connecting the elements.

And, yes, I am using another element – theme – just to help me think about the book. Be creative and use whatever is available to you. It just so happens that religion is a very strong theme in this novel.

What do the three brothers have in common?

They have the same father.
Each one has a romantic interest (meaning, a beloved woman).
All three have some kind of a relationship with God.

These are three ways in which the brothers are related to one another. All we need is one type of a relationship among them to write this essay.

This is a religious novel, and yes, some of the characters will be linked to a form of a divinity. In this case, the religion is Christianity.

Note: there are many ways in which you can play with elements of a novel and examples of them. Here’s a detailed video I made about this process:

Let’s see if we can pick the best relationship of those we just enumerated.

They all have the same father.

This relationship is only factual. It is not very interesting in any way. So we move on to the next one.

They all have women they love.

Each brother has a romantic interest, to use a literary term. We can examine each of the brothers as a lover.

Who is the most fervent lover? Who is perhaps more distant and closed? This is an interesting connecting relationship to explore.

One of them is the most passionate about his woman, but so is another one – I won’t say who so I don’t spoil the novel for you. The third brother seems rather intellectual about his love interest.

So, romantic interest is a good candidate for a connecting relationship. Let’s explore the next connection candidate.

They all relate to God in one way or another.

Let’s see if we can put the brothers’ relationships with God in some sort of an order. Well, Alexei is a monk in learning. He lives at the monastery and studies Christianity. He is the closest to God.

Dmitriy is a believer, but he is more distant from God due to his passionate affair with his woman. He loses his head many times and does things that are ungodly, according to the author. So, although he is a believer, he is more distant from God than is Alexei.

Finally, Ivan is a self-proclaimed atheist. Therefore, he is the farthest away from God.

It looks like we got ourselves a nice sequence, or progression, which we can probably use to write this essay about this novel.

What is the sequence? The sequence is:

Alexei is the closest to God, Dmitriy is second closest, and Ivan is pretty far away.

It looks like we have a pattern here.

If we look at the brothers in the book and watch their emotions closely, we’ll come to the conclusion that they go from blissful to very emotionally unstable to downright miserable to the point of insanity.

Here’s the conclusion we must make:

The closer the character’s relationship with God, the happier he is, and the farther away he is from God, the more miserable he appears to be.

Wow. This is quite a conclusion. It looks like we have just uncovered one of Dostoyevskiy’s main arguments in this novel, if not the main point he is trying to make.

Now that we’ve identified our three elements (examples) and a strong connecting relationship among them, we can move on to Step 4.

Step 4. Take a stand and write your thesis statement

Now we’re ready to formulate our thesis statement. It consists of two parts:

Your Thesis (your main argument)
Your Outline of Support (how you plan to support your main point)

By now, we have everything we need to write a very clear and strong thesis statement.

First, let’s state our thesis as clearly and succinctly as possible, based on what we already know:

See how clear this is? And most importantly, this is clear not only to the reader, but also to you as the writer. Now you know exactly what statement you will be supporting in the body of the essay.

Are we finished with the thesis statement? Not yet. The second part consists of your supporting points. And again, we have everything we need to write it. Let’s do it.

“Alexei’s state of mind is ultimately blissful, because he is a true and observant believer. Dmitriy’s faith is upstaged by his passion for a woman, and he suffers a lot as a result. Ivan’s renunciation of God makes him the unhappiest of the brothers and eventually leads him to insanity.”

Guess what – we have just written our complete thesis statement. And it’s also our whole first paragraph.

We are ready for Step 5.

Step 5. Write the body of the essay

Again, just like in the previous step, you have everything you need to structure and write out the body of this essay.

How many main sections will this essay have? Because we are writing about three brothers, it only makes sense that our essay will have three main sections.

Each section may have one or more paragraphs. So, here’s an important question to consider:

How many words or pages do you have to write?

Let’s say your teacher or professor wants you to write 2,000 words on this topic. Then, here is your strategic breakdown:

Thesis Statement (first paragraph) = 100 words
Conclusion (last paragraph) = 100 words
Body of the Essay = 1,800 words

Let me show you how easy it is to subdivide the body of the essay into sections and subsections.

We already know that we have three sections. And we need 1,800 words total for the body. This leads us to 600 words per main section (meaning, per brother).

Can we subdivide further? Yes, we can. And we should.

When discussing each of the brothers, we connect two subjects: his relationship with God AND his psychological state. That’s how we make those connections.

So, we should simply subdivide each section of 600 words into two subsections of 300 words each. And now all we need to do is to write each part as if it were a standalone 300-word essay.

Does this make sense? See how simple and clear this is?

Writing Your Paragraphs

Writing good paragraphs is a topic for an entire article of its own. It is a science and an art.

In essence, you start your paragraph with a good lead sentence in which you make one point. Then, you provide reasons, explanations, and examples to support it.

Here is an article I wrote on how to write great paragraphs .

Once you’ve written the body of the essay, one last step remains.

Step 6. Add an introduction and a conclusion

Introductions and conclusions are those little parts of an essay that your teachers and professors will want you to write.

Introduction

In our example, we already have a full opening paragraph going. It’s our thesis statement.

To write an introduction, all you need to do is add one or two sentences above the thesis statement.

Here is our thesis statement:

“In his novel Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevskiy describes a world in which happiness is directly proportional to proximity to God. The closer to God a character is, the happier and more emotionally stable he is, and vice versa. Alexei’s state of mind is ultimately blissful, because he is a true and observant believer. Dmitriy’s faith is upstaged by his passion for a woman, and he suffers a lot as a result. Ivan’s renunciation of God makes him the unhappiest of the brothers and eventually leads him to insanity.”

As you can see, it is a complete paragraph that doesn’t lack anything. But because we need to have an introduction, here is a sentence with which we can open this paragraph:

“Dostoyevskiy is a great Russian novelist who explores the theme of religion in many of his books.”

And then just proceed with the rest of the paragraph. Read this sentence followed by the thesis statement, and you see that it works great. And it took me about 30 seconds to write this introductory sentence.

You can write conclusions in several different ways. But the most time-proven way is to simply restate your thesis.

If you write your thesis statement the way I teach, you will have a really strong opening paragraph that can be easily reworded to craft a good conclusion.

Here is an article I wrote (which includes a video) on how to write conclusions .

Congratulations!

You’ve made it to the end, and now you know exactly how to write an essay about a novel or any work of fiction!

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.” –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture. –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think. –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel Lost Children Archive (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a good conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment. Tell Me How It Ends is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.” –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing Bad Feminist that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell. This Young Monster (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from Artforum , Dazed & Confused , and Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic, This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) · Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012) · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014) · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014) · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014) · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) · Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016) · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016) · Lindy West, Shrill (2016) · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016) · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016) · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016) · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016) · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017) · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017) · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017) · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017) · Joan Didion, South and West (2017) · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017) · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017) · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) · Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017) · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018) · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018) · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018) · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018) · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018) · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019) · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019) · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019) · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019) · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019) · Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019) · Robert A. Caro, Working (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

Previous article, next article.

RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Dr. Sandi Van Lieu

**For a video overview of this essay, see further down on this page.

Video Overview:

Attributions

Images and video created by Dr. Sandi Van Lieu and licensed under CC BY NC SA.
Student essay example by Janelle Devin and used with permission.

Share This Book

Entertainment
Environment
Information Science and Technology
Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Literature

Essay Samples on Novel

Exploring identity and spirituality: an analysis of "go tell it on the mountain".

"Go Tell It on the Mountain" by James Baldwin is a poignant and introspective novel that delves into themes of identity, spirituality, and the complexities of family dynamics. Set in Harlem during the 1930s, the novel follows the Grimes family as they navigate personal struggles,...

"We Were the Mulvaneys": An AP Literature Analysis

"We Were the Mulvaneys," a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, delves into the complexities of family, identity, and societal expectations. Through the lens of the Mulvaney family's experiences, Oates explores themes of innocence, tragedy, and resilience. This AP Literature essay will analyze the novel's central...

"Haroun and the Sea of Stories": A Journey Through Imagination and Reality

"Haroun and the Sea of Stories" by Salman Rushdie is a captivating novel that seamlessly weaves together the realms of imagination and reality. Through the protagonist's whimsical journey, Rushdie explores the power of storytelling to shape perceptions, challenge oppression, and restore a sense of wonder....

"Fourth Wing": A Spellbinding Journey into a World of Magic and Self-Discovery

Book enthusiasts are brimming with anticipation for a captivating new young adult fantasy novel slated for release in 2023. Entitled Fourth Wing, this literary marvel hails from the adept quill of author Emily Duncan, marking her second literary opus following the triumph of Wicked Saints...

Dear Martin: Depiction of Racism in Nic Stone's Novel

Introduction 'Dear Martin' is an excellent novel for young adults written by American author Nic Stone. This is her debut novel and it specializes in discussing and portraying racism in the society. The novel is about an African American high school student named Justyce who...

Racial Profiling

Stressed out with your paper?

Consider using writing assistance:

100% unique papers
3 hrs deadline option

Kennedy's Revenge: A Blend of Fiction and Non-Fiction

Introduction Kennedy’s Revenge: The Election of 2016 by Stephen L Rodenbeck has an enticing format in which the book is split between both fiction and non-fiction, with alternate chapters for each. This interesting structure is something which originally drew me to the novel, as I...

The Intricacies of Fiction and Nonfiction

Exploring the Boundaries of Fiction and Nonfiction Every book, short story, or novel ever written will have bits and pieces of fiction inside of it, and every different type of writing is considered to be a story. What exactly is a story? According to the...

Empowering Female Lead in 'Little Women'

Introduction When Louisa May Alcott published “Little Women” it became a hit around the world for children and adults alike. At the time it was published in 1868, it was instantly unique in the sense that it had characters that broke conventional gender roles, which...

Gender Roles
Little Women

Empathy and Redemption in J.M. Coetzee's 'Disgrace'

Introduction J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace suggests that certain scenes throughout the novel played significant roles that were crucial for David Lurie to develop remorse and provide subsequent action. In the novel, multiple controversial scenes transpired that created dishonor for Professor Lurie but also regret. These scenes...

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Disgrace': A Tale of Post-Apartheid South Africa

Introduction Disgrace was written in 1999, by the author, J.M Coetzee. Born in South Africa in 1940, Coetzee grew up during a time called apartheid, meaning: “a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race”. In Disgrace, the drama of violence and...

South Africa

Social Divisions, Traditions in 'Brooklyn' by Colm Toibin

Introduction Social divisions in Borough Park, Brooklyn can shape an individual’s lifestyle through many factors. The novel Brooklyn by Colm Tóbín shows this through the characters Tony and Eilis. The education and economic opportunities that Tony receives are based on his parents’ social status while...

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Social Class

Brooklyn' by Colm Toibin: Navigating Immigration and Romance

Introduction Originally written by Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis, a sheltered young woman from 1950s Ireland who is persuaded to immigrate away from the comfort of her small hometown to Brooklyn, New York where employment and education prospects are much better. Her...

Immigration in America

Emigration Struggles and Triumphs: A Journey in 'Brooklyn'

Introduction Brooklyn (2015), directed by John Crowley takes place in New York City during the 1950s. The film is a romantic historical film that is based on the novel of the same name by Colm Toibin. It tells the story of a young Irish immigrant...

Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing: Struggle of Finding One’s Self

Through symbolism, in trying to fit in according to societal expectations, one is conflicted about their identity which causes one to feel conflicted with their position in society, in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing. Gyasi utilizes the symbolism of language to demonstrate that language can make one...

13 Reasons Why: Raising Awareness of the Issue of Teen Suicide

You can't stop the future. You can't rewind the past. The only way to live is to press play. 13 Reasons Why the bestseller book is written in 2007 by Jay Asher. It's a General Fiction. It's about a girl named 'Hannah Baker' who has...

13 Reasons Why

Loss Of Innocence Through The Lord Of The Flies Novel

In the novel Lord of the Flies, innocence was progressively lost through the boys. The boys were implanted in a situation where they had no other choice but to grow up and to develop faster. The boys were put in a very qisquenting situation and...

Lord of The Flies

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Plot And Novel Analysis

The 1950s was a decade plagued by traditional gender roles for women and men. It wasn't uncommon for a book to mention that the best career for every woman is, of course, taking care of her husband and home. Therefore, it isn't surprising that Ken...

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The Writing Style of Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart

Achebe says, “There is no story that is not true.” People tell a story for a great reason, the reason to share with the world to people, to understand what they are feeling deep inside them. Even if the story isn’t accurate, it may be...

Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart

"The Kite Runner" By Khaled Hosseini: Book Review

Franz Kafka said, “A book should be an ax for the frozen sea within us.” This quote describes how our world is like a frozen sea...untouched and still. A book is supposed to break that stillness of a world, just like “The Kite Runner” by...

The Kite Runner

Perception Of The Time In K. Vonneguts’ Slaughterhouse - Five

Most of the time Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is considered to be an anti-war novel, however, there are moments in the novel where Vonnegut challenges his readers in questioning their character's perception of time by having the unusual structure of storytelling. We can appreciate this novel...

Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five

Ruined Friendships And Broken Dreams In "Of Mice and Men"

I am here to talk to you about how the book 'Of Mice and Men' is pessimistic with the following: incomplete dreams, and ruined friendships. My evidence overshadows what is optimistic. If they think this book is full of a happy future and harmlessness, they...

Of Mice and Men

Craig Silvey’s Australian Novel “Jasper Jones”

Craig Silvey’s Australian novel “Jasper Jones” highlights the importance of an outsider to make the readers feel connected and helps to show how a single persons biased view can affect everyone, when it comes to human experience the representation of an outsider helps to shape...

Jasper Jones
Literature Review

“The Godfather”: Within and Beyond the Family

The concept of family, at its most basic level, represents a sense of unity within the household. Within every family, there are distinct customs and ideals that are maintained. The familial environment often shapes a person’s character and values, at least in his/her youth. Whether...

Family Values
The Godfather

The Famous Book “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi

Novelist, Tom Robbins is known for saying, ̈Our similarities bring us to common ground. Our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.¨ Similarities and differences are something common in human society. The book “Persepolis” is about the coming of age of a young...

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Novel "The Help" Become a Movie

The Help, a famous novel written by Kathryn Stockett, which soon also became a movie, tells the story of how African Americans in the United States experienced racism. Specifically, it demonstrates shameful, humiliating and unbearable living conditions of black maids in the 1960s, the civil...

African American

Functionality of Suspense in the Poe’s and Shelley's Novels

Suspense is dominant in both Poe’s and Shelley's novels. However, suspense is demonstrated similarly and differently by the two authors. Firstly, in the short story “The Tell- Tale Heart” Poe used the technique of suspense efficiently by employing frantic diction and first-person point-of-view to bring...

Short Story

Guilt as the Central Theme in the Literature

Guilt is one of the central themes and the center of the whole novel as readers' thoughts of guilts towards Perry and Dick vary as we learn more about their past. Regardless of who pulled the triggered and committed the actual murder, I think both...

Protagonist

The Virgin Suicides: A Story Of Desperation

The Virgin Suicides is an american novel written byˈJeffrey Eugenides and published in 1993. It is the first novel written by Jeffrey Eugenides, it is a tragedy novel. This novel deals with adolesence, love, death. The novel tels the story of the Lisbon sisters, from...

Book Review

The Division Of Nature in The Deliverance

Nature is found all-around individuals and has allowed humans to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Just like the characters in Deliverance, nature acts as an obstacle and causes many of the characters to face difficult challenges. Nature can also cause individuals to think differently about...

The Deliverance

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword: How Authors Change The World Around Them

Throughout the years, many different changes have happened in modern society. Protests, wars, and injustices have all contributed to making the world what it is today, yet no other means of change have impacted as much as literature. Influenced by the powerful words, carefully chosen...

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Impact Of Bad Parenting On Child Development In The Glass Castle

In the book, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls talks about her unusual childhood of constant poverty and the chaos and confusion of her dysfunctional parents and their nomadic lifestyle. What is so cool about Jeanette’s story is that although Jeanette’s parents were irresponsible, neglectful and...

The Glass Castle

The Theme Of Abandonment In The Veldt

The theme of abandonment is relevant because without this theme there would be less context and understanding. In this story the children truly believe that their parents have abandoned them and there need by not giving them what they desire the most. But in reality...

Literary Analysis Of Of Mice And Men Y John Steinbeck

It is a modernist novella and It takes place in Salinas,California during the great depression in the early 1930s. Steinbeck published many more novels in his life, he wrote 31 books and his most well-known books are Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath (1939)...

John Steinbeck

Hegemony And Resistance And Culture Clash In Things Fall Apart

The flexible nature of Igbo community manifests itself in several ways in the novel. It is reflected in Uchendu’s assertion that the old and new generation do not have much in common concerning the willingness to keep relationships secure. Uchendu represents the past generation who...

Use Of Themes Of Savagery And Civilization To Portray Society Lord Of The Flies

William Golding uses the themes of loss of innocence, evil in the world, and the progression from civilized to savagery in his novel Lord of the Flies to portray his vision of society. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is about a group of sixteen...

Literary Devices Used In George Orwell's 1984

Most of the authors in the literary devices intend to pass certain and specific messages to their audience. Majority of them evaluate the happenings in the society. As such, the messages aim at changing the society towards the ability by the people to maintain the...

The Use Of Literary Devices And Other Techniques In Orwell's "1984"

The horrendousness of the truth is often masked by the distortion of the reality that is present in truth. The purpose behind George Orwell’s 1984 was to expose this truth of the world in a manner that would not take away from what was plainly...

Things Fall Apart: Culture Clash Of The Tribes

The most damaging and dangerous explanation somebody can say is to 'Take care of business.' As Carlos Gomez once expressed, 'such a significant number of men in this world (are) living in this kind of calm urgency, limited in this crate of lethal manliness.' In...

The Symbolism Of The Doll's House In Doll's House

Life is an inconsistency. It is excellent and hard. It is confinements and opportunity. It is everything and some of the time insufficient. It is incomprehensible but, the conceivable outcomes are unfathomable. It is baffling, in light of the fact that while it is every...

A Doll's House

Survival Is Insufficient In Novel Of Station Eleven

Societies can interconnect human life but can also isolate people from each other with the technology within. Station Eleven is a novel about a society devolving into a Dystopia, but it also explores what a society is. Mandel explores society through different perspectives by describing...

Station Eleven

The Lifetime Memories Of The Past And Present In Station Eleven And Monkey Beach

Individuals experience many things over their lifetime that make them who they are. Joyful, stressful, exciting and traumatic experiences are often things every individual goes through; the one thing that connects all of them is memory. Memory allows one to reflect on experiences that are...

The Glass Castle: The Impact Of Rex Drinking On The Protagonist

The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls is autobiographical account of her unusual and unconventional childhood. The book begins with Walls describing a lunch she had with her mother and describing how ashamed she was of her mother because she was homeless and shameless about...

Examples Of Poverty In Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle"

The Glass Castle, Walls Jeannette, shared her experiences growing up with parents who are totally acting differently from a normal society. Their strange behaviors made Jeannette and her siblings struggling with how they should interact with society. However, Jeannette was having a problem with her...

The Dogmas Of Good Vs Evil In Good Man Is Hard To Find

Flannery O'Connor illustrates the religious decay of the south through the creation of flawed, contradicted and evil characters in her story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Though they appear to be complete opposites described within the text, the Grandma and The Misfit share...

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Road To Redemption: Amir’s Betrayal In Hosseini’s The Kite Runner

Nobody would ever believe that an innocent diversion of kite flying could turn into an epic tale of betrayal and in the end, eventual redemption. Khaled Hosseini in The Kite Runner manages to weld this activity with the journey of one man from betrayer to...

The Resilience Of The Main Character In The Glass Castle

Jeanette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, chronicles Jeanette’s unconventional childhood characterized by persistent poverty and the chaos and confusion of dysfunctional parents and their nomadic lifestyle. What is remarkable about Jeanette’s story is that although Jeanette’s parents were irresponsible, neglectful and careless, they did manage...

The Battle Of Civilization And Savagery In Lord Of The Flies

In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, there are several samples of savagery that take place on the tropical island. The savagery is within the nature of a number of the boys hearts. The boys exhibit savage traits when the circumstances turn...

William Golding

Literary Analysis Of American Dream Theme In Of Mice And Men

John Steinback was an author of many novels and also won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature for his realistic and imaginative writing. One novel he wrote was Of Mice and Men which focused on two characters Lennie and George who dream of living on...

The Common Motif Of Betrayal In Kite Runner

Betrayal is a common motif in Kite Runner, and it happens on numerous occasions, mainly with Baba and Amir. Baba betrays Ali, Hassan, and in a way Amir himself by secretly being the father of Hassan with Ali’s wife. Amir betrayed Hassan when he watched...

Comparative Analysis Of Station Eleven And War For The Planet Of The Apes

The history of humanity has been riddled with new diseases and mass pandemics that have threatened the collapse of society. In today’s media, artists like to imagine a world where this disastrous event does happen, when medicine fails and the world is thrust into a...

To Kill A Mockingbird: The Symbolism Of Mockingbird In The Book

In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, two men who live completely different lives are on trial against one another. Even though they seem to be only compared as different from each other, they also have compared similarities of each other throughout the novel....

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Glass Castle Shatters Expectations By Its Examples Of Poverty

I would highly recommend The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and The Glass Castle (2017) directed by Destin Daniel Cretton to anyone who needs a good laugh and cry! I believe that anyone who is of a mature age can enjoy the memoir and film...

The Presentation Of Betrayal In The Kite Runner

For there to be betrayal, there has to be accept as true with first. For each individual in The Kite Runner, there had been trusts of all forms. Trust of family and near friends had been all betrayed. In the novel, The Kite Runner, Hosseini...

Gender Roles And Womanhood In Adichie Purple Hibiscus And Emecheta‘s The Bride Price

The representation of female gender is mostly sloppy and biased. It is belief that men are the bulwark of any society. However, their contribution to the overall development of mankind and the nature in general is great. Women on the other hand is saddled with...

Purple Hibiscus

Gender Roles and Victimization Of Women In Adichie’s "Purple Hibiscus"

Abstract: Women are given the position of ‘second sex’ since the time immemorial. They have been subjected to have a secondary treatment and they are deprived of the opportunities which are enjoyed by men. This discrimination pushes the fair sex into the background position and...

Reflection On Louis Zamperini's Life In Unbroken

The adventurous and dangerous life of Olympic Runner Louis Zamperini in the book Unbroken isn’t just for entertainment. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is a biography of an Olympic runner Louis Zamperini who enlisted in the air force and when his plane crashes he becomes a...

Remain Unbroken: The Story Of Unlikely Survival

Throughout the powerful novel Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini shows a relentless will to survive in extreme ways that most could not, also demonstrating many counts of leadership. Louis Zamperini has been innovative and...

Imagery and Character Evolution in "The Purple Hibiscus"

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus unleashes the lives of two young characters Kambili, the main character and Jaja, her older brother, that are brought up by a religiously rigid father, Papa, who adheres to Catholicism consequently overshadowing his paternal love. Papa eventually punishes his...

Exploring Hidden Symbolism Of Growth In "Purple Hibiscus"

When raised in a country hindered by the hardships of domestic violence, voicing one's true thoughts can often carry savage consequences, Purple Hibiscus is no exception. When the voice of the Achike family is confined in an oppressive society and home under Eugene, an authoritarian...

Lord Of The Flies: Savagery Against Civilization

What would happen if a group of boys from a civilized society all get stranded on an island with no adults? Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding and is about a group of schoolboys stranded on an island away from all civilization....

The Notion Of Justice In Boccaccio's The Decameron

Boccaccio presents an earthly system of justice to show how messy human life is. This tells us that the divine system of justice (one that Dante adheres to) does not fit with the complications that life presents us. Dante’s use of his moral system, which...

The Decameron

Tuesdays With Morrie: The Aphorisms Used In A Book

Tuesdays With Morrie is a novel based on a true story about a professor named Morrie Shwartz and the memorable lessons he taught to the people around him, specifically his student, Mitch Albom. Morrie taught Sociology at Brandeis University. His earnestness towards teaching and the...

The Aphorisms Of Change In Tuesdays With Morrie

Some of the most important, famous and infamous things happened on a Tuesday. In late October of 1929, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed, a leading factor that led to the Great Depression. This is famously called Black Tuesday. On June 6, 1944, Allied forces...

Tuesdays With Morrie

Unbroken By Laura Hillenbrand And The Message Of Not Giving Up

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is one of the most interesting books that I've at any point perused. This true to life piece has even made me have an alternate point of view and made me consider the lesson of the story in an edifying manner....

The Vanity Of The Pursuit Of Justice In Billy Budd By Herman Melville

The course Herman Melville charts in his novella, Billy Budd, Sailor, is long and convoluted, perhaps surpassing even that of Captain Ahab and his crazed pursuit of the white whale. Published nearly three decades after Melville’s death, the author’s last work of prose is set...

Symbolism And Exposition In David Guterson's Novel Snow Falling On Cedars

In the northwestern United States, there is a small island called 'San Piedro', where the Hatsue of the Japanese girl was born. She is graceful, gentle, and hardworking. She and the white boy, Ishmael, grew up together and lived together for a long time. With...

Snow Falling On Cedars

The Fault In Our Stars: A Realistic And Emotional Story About Tragic Love

The Fault in Our Stars is a book by John Green and is 313 pages long. I really really liked this book for many reasons. But one important reason was because of the real-life lesson the book teaches. It enlightens the readers that everyone is...

The Fault in Our Stars

Reading Assignment: Analysis Of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Looking For Alaska And The Pursuit Of Happiness

Though the definition of great literature is ultimately indefinite and variable to an individual, it generally possesses several universal traits. Great literature is not only a one-time read; it is something that delivers a strong moral that stays applicable despite its time and cultural context....

Analysis Of The Uniqueness In Leo Tolstoy's Critically Acclaimed Novel War And Peace

A masterpiece War and Peace a famous Russian masterpiece written by Leo Tolstoy in the year 1865-1867 and was firstly published 130 years ago (Murphy, 2016) and of 1225 pages. The novel remained world acclaimed and is known for practicality of real life that he...

War and Peace

History of the Evolution of the English Novel

Dictionary defines the term novel as ”A fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.” The novel, therefore, developed as a piece of prose fiction that presented characters in real-life events and situations. Novel as a literary...

The Role of Major Japanese Creators in the World War II

Japan has been greatly affected by the events of World War II and the aftermath of it. Many great pieces of work have been created by the Japanese. The author Koushun Takami and the famous director in the anime industry, Hayao Miyazaki, are both from...

Princess Mononoke

This Boy's Life and the Complexities of Life in the Novel

This entry begins with Jack starting his first year in high school. He saved eighty dollars which he had either solen or earned. He fantasizes of going to Alaska to escape and plans to take his mother with him. He and Arthur confide in each...

This Boy's Life

Fictional and Cultural Analysis of Obasan in Japanese Culture

Holistic thinking allows for the highest benefit in all areas of a healthy life and planning for or taking action to support the healthiest outcome with balance in all areas. The term 'holistic thinking” in the Japanese culture refers to a picture of mentality in...

Personal Identity

A Fine Line Between Love and Immortality

In the novel, The Invention of Morel, we learn about a Venezualan fugitive’s life on what is said to be a dangerous uninhabited Polynesian island. He resides on the island because he is attempting to hide from the police. However, one day more people show...

Immortality

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels as the Foundation of Historic Fiction

In Gods and Generals, Shaara tells old stories in his own style and prose, using factual information to create a realistic yet still entertaining narrative. The author’s tales revolve around four generals and the events surrounding them, particularly in reference to the Civil War. Shaara...

The Killer Angels

The Fleet from Death in DeLillo's Novel, White Noise

In the novel, White Noise, Don DeLillo, the author, leads us on a journey that follows the life of Jack, a chairman of Hitler Studies, and his wife Babette, who eventually shares the same fear of death as her husband. Throughout, the novel Babette makes...

White Noise

The Range and Diversity of Characters in White Noise

Don Delillo's White Noise has a plethora of character's in the short novel that are dynamic and static. We are introduced to the main character Jack Glady and his family who are major characters and drive the story forward. They are all of varying degrees...

Political Satire in Claude McKay’s Amiable with Big Teeth

Claude McKay is a prominent African American writer of twentieth century. He was born in Jamaica in 1889. He has written four novels. His novels mainly focus on race, colour, sex, gender, social justice, education, culture, and so on. His fourth novel Amiable with Big...

Claude Mckay

Catch-22: The Dilemma as an Integral Part of Progression

Joseph Heller's novel “Catch-22” is a story that follows Yossarian, a bombardier stationed on the island Pianosa, by the Italian coast in the Mediterranean. His goal being to finally be discharged from combat. While following Yossarain’s plight we are shown details through Heller’s different literary...

The Role of Women in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

In The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, not many women are displayed with active roles; although they are present, it is evident that males are the focal point of the novel. Tolkien was born into the time where women did not have many...

Zadie Smith's Work and Revolutionary Ideas in Literature

With the release of her first novel White Teeth in 2000, Zadie Smith immediately made the world fall in love with the novelist, essayist, and short story writer that she is. Close to two decades, five more novels, and many short stories later, the English...

Falling in Love

Oedipa as the Central Figure of The Crying of Lot 49

Few commentaries on the novel are silent on the subject of Oedipa’s name. Most take for granted that it is significant in a straightforward way: by referring the reader to some extra-textual network of meanings the name appropriates some or all of those meanings for...

The Crying of Lot 49

The Use of Allegory and Symbolism in the "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck

Throughout John Steinbeck’s novel, “East of Eden,” forces of good and evil were represented through physical forms. The characters in the novel shared similarities with important figures in the bible and rehashed the stories and events that occurred in famous tellings of Christianity. Readers delved...

East of Eden

Isolation and Loneliness in Anita Desai’s Cry the Peacock

Anita Desai’s cry the Peacock is a powerful novel representing the estranged relationship of a Husband and his wife. The dreams of a simple, loving and admiring girl come to tatters after her marriage to Gautam, a practical minded and romantically dull husband. Maya, a...

Reason Versus Emotion in Anita Desai’s Cry, The Peacock

Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock portrays the trauma of a married woman inflicted by a male dominated society. She gets enslaved by the belief that her family male members are her protectors. Once she realizes that they cut her off from their family domain, she...

Isolation of One with Family and Beliefs in The Poisonwood Bible

Exile is a central idea present in the Poisonwood Bible and is displayed through the character, Adah Price. Adah Price is plagued by Hemiplegia, a genetic disorder that causes one whole side of her body to be limp. Due to her disorder, she has only...

Personal Beliefs
The Poisonwood Bible

The Hidden Meanings and Symbolism in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

The Russian novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn uses physical objects such as the spoon, bread, hat, and parcels, to represent Shukhov's inner struggle to survive his circumstances. Hidden throughout the book are symbols used to convey the deeper...

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Understanding

The Absurdity of Henry Fleming's Red Badge of Courage

Although Henry Fleming goes into training as a new recruit, he doesn’t gather a soldier’s true discipline until he learns to overcome his fear on the war zone and accept the structure of military orders. For some people, Henry Fleming goes from a coward to...

The Red Badge of Courage

Women Novelists of Victorian Age and Thematic Concerns in their Works

The present study is an interpretation of women novelists of the Victorian age and their significant works. The Victorian era is known for the galaxy of female novelists. It was an era of material affluence, political awakening, democratic reforms, industrial and mechanical progress, scientific advancement,...

Middlemarch
Victorian Era

The Red Badge of Courage: The Struggles of Adolescence

Perhaps a more fitting title for this novel is The Pursuit of Courage, as each interaction showed 18-year-old Henry Flemming learning to find courage. Henry's mind was a canvas painted upon with fantasies of warfare on par with the works of Homer. Encouraged to enlist...

Adolescence

Of Mice and Men: The Controversial Reading Ban

Of Mice and Men was a novel published in 1937, it remains today by loved by people of all over. It’s easily a story of friendship under all odds. Now the question with this novel is should it or should it not be banned. First...

What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie: Sentimental Value Has No Price Tag

The story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” takes place in the city of Seattle where a homeless Native American, Jackson Jackson, embarks on a journey not to steal, but to earn money to recover his grandmother’s regalia. He goes through many obstacles to obtain...

Sherman Alexie
What You Pawn I Will Redeem

Theme of Loss in Sherman Alexie's Novel What you Pawn I will Redeem and Small Good Things by Raymond Carver

As individuals, we all deal losses. At some point in time we lose connection with friends and family, we suffer financial loss, or we break down emotionally. We deal with the losses in a way that match our personality. There are stories that have an...

Portrayal od Racial Stereotypes in Uncle Tom's Cabin

“A round, black, shining face is hers, so glossy as to suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with white of eggs, like one of her own tea risks. Her whole plump countenance beams of satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched...

Slave Trade
Uncle Tom's Cabin

Societal Issues Portrayed in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Literature can have a far-reaching impact on society as it conveys and introduces emotion, catalyzes one towards action, and creates an awareness which, often times, leads to social change. One of the most influential American books ever written, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a clear and...

Slavery and Christianity’s Incompatibility in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Novel Uncle Tom's Cabin

The novel “Uncle Toms Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe she writes one of the most inspiring novels of all-time. This novel exposes the cultural misconceptions of early America. This novel was written to fight against slavery at its peak in the 1850’s. Through this novel...

The Use of Satire in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a literary masterpiece that explores the issues of racism, slavery, and societal norms prevalent in the antebellum South. Twain's use of satire, irony, and humor in the novel enables him to address these issues effectively, making it...

Summary of Zora Neale Hurtson’s Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of Zora Neale Hurtson’s most accomplished and acclaimed novels and works in her career. An African American writer born in 1901 at Eatonville, Florida, she attended school until her mother passed away, and accompanied a theater company at...

Harlem Renaissance
Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God: The Search for True Love

How would you feel if the person you truly love dies? In the search for unconditional love, sometimes you find yourself along the way. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie (the main character) search for true love that...

Formal Essay, Their Eyes Were Watching God: How Surroundings Influence People

Pauline Hopkins, a prominent African-American journalist and novelist one said “after all, our surroundings influence our lives and characters as much as fate, destiny or any supernatural agency” (Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces). In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist--Janie Crawford--is...

Best topics on Novel

1. Exploring Identity and Spirituality: An Analysis of “Go Tell It on the Mountain”

2. “We Were the Mulvaneys”: An AP Literature Analysis

3. “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”: A Journey Through Imagination and Reality

4. “Fourth Wing”: A Spellbinding Journey into a World of Magic and Self-Discovery

5. Dear Martin: Depiction of Racism in Nic Stone’s Novel

6. Kennedy’s Revenge: A Blend of Fiction and Non-Fiction

7. The Intricacies of Fiction and Nonfiction

8. Empowering Female Lead in ‘Little Women’

9. Empathy and Redemption in J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace’

10. Disgrace’: A Tale of Post-Apartheid South Africa

11. Social Divisions, Traditions in ‘Brooklyn’ by Colm Toibin

12. Brooklyn’ by Colm Toibin: Navigating Immigration and Romance

13. Emigration Struggles and Triumphs: A Journey in ‘Brooklyn’

14. Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing: Struggle of Finding One’s Self

15. 13 Reasons Why: Raising Awareness of the Issue of Teen Suicide

A Raisin in The Sun
William Shakespeare
Hidden Intellectualism
Sonny's Blues
Literary Devices
Where I Lived and What I Lived
A Place to Stand
Desiree's Baby
Phillis Wheatley

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Essay collections: Like short stories, but TRUE! When you're in the mood for fact over fiction, check out these must-read contemporary essay collections.

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone. Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read Would Everybody Please Stop? is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food, Longthroat Memoirs is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails, Longthroat Memoirs explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as The Believer , The New Yorker , and Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience. Betwixt and Between is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In Look Alive Out There, whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on Gossip Girl, befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview, Idiophone is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch . From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick , Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby

“With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul

“In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead Rolling Stone to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues, Shrewed is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber), Double Bind could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God) by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask , edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes, A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

The Best Fiction and Mysteries of 2024, According to Barnes & Noble

17 Book Review Examples to Help You Write the Perfect Review

Join Discovery, the new community for book lovers

Trust book recommendations from real people, not robots 🤓

Blog – Posted on Friday, Mar 29

17 book review examples to help you write the perfect review.

It’s an exciting time to be a book reviewer. Once confined to print newspapers and journals, reviews now dot many corridors of the Internet — forever helping others discover their next great read. That said, every book reviewer will face a familiar panic: how can you do justice to a great book in just a thousand words?

As you know, the best way to learn how to do something is by immersing yourself in it. Luckily, the Internet (i.e. Goodreads and other review sites , in particular) has made book reviews more accessible than ever — which means that there are a lot of book reviews examples out there for you to view!

In this post, we compiled 17 prototypical book review examples in multiple genres to help you figure out how to write the perfect review . If you want to jump straight to the examples, you can skip the next section. Otherwise, let’s first check out what makes up a good review.

Are you interested in becoming a book reviewer? We recommend you check out Reedsy Discovery , where you can earn money for writing reviews — and are guaranteed people will read your reviews! To register as a book reviewer, sign up here.

Pro-tip : But wait! How are you sure if you should become a book reviewer in the first place? If you're on the fence, or curious about your match with a book reviewing career, take our quick quiz:

Should you become a book reviewer?

Find out the answer. Takes 30 seconds!

What must a book review contain?

Like all works of art, no two book reviews will be identical. But fear not: there are a few guidelines for any aspiring book reviewer to follow. Most book reviews, for instance, are less than 1,500 words long, with the sweet spot hitting somewhere around the 1,000-word mark. (However, this may vary depending on the platform on which you’re writing, as we’ll see later.)

In addition, all reviews share some universal elements, as shown in our book review templates . These include:

A review will offer a concise plot summary of the book.
A book review will offer an evaluation of the work.
A book review will offer a recommendation for the audience.

If these are the basic ingredients that make up a book review, it’s the tone and style with which the book reviewer writes that brings the extra panache. This will differ from platform to platform, of course. A book review on Goodreads, for instance, will be much more informal and personal than a book review on Kirkus Reviews, as it is catering to a different audience. However, at the end of the day, the goal of all book reviews is to give the audience the tools to determine whether or not they’d like to read the book themselves.

Keeping that in mind, let’s proceed to some book review examples to put all of this in action.

How much of a book nerd are you, really?

Find out here, once and for all. Takes 30 seconds!

Book review examples for fiction books

Since story is king in the world of fiction, it probably won’t come as any surprise to learn that a book review for a novel will concentrate on how well the story was told .

That said, book reviews in all genres follow the same basic formula that we discussed earlier. In these examples, you’ll be able to see how book reviewers on different platforms expertly intertwine the plot summary and their personal opinions of the book to produce a clear, informative, and concise review.

Note: Some of the book review examples run very long. If a book review is truncated in this post, we’ve indicated by including a […] at the end, but you can always read the entire review if you click on the link provided.

Examples of literary fiction book reviews

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man :

An extremely powerful story of a young Southern Negro, from his late high school days through three years of college to his life in Harlem.

His early training prepared him for a life of humility before white men, but through injustices- large and small, he came to realize that he was an "invisible man". People saw in him only a reflection of their preconceived ideas of what he was, denied his individuality, and ultimately did not see him at all. This theme, which has implications far beyond the obvious racial parallel, is skillfully handled. The incidents of the story are wholly absorbing. The boy's dismissal from college because of an innocent mistake, his shocked reaction to the anonymity of the North and to Harlem, his nightmare experiences on a one-day job in a paint factory and in the hospital, his lightning success as the Harlem leader of a communistic organization known as the Brotherhood, his involvement in black versus white and black versus black clashes and his disillusion and understanding of his invisibility- all climax naturally in scenes of violence and riot, followed by a retreat which is both literal and figurative. Parts of this experience may have been told before, but never with such freshness, intensity and power.

This is Ellison's first novel, but he has complete control of his story and his style. Watch it.

Lyndsey reviews George Orwell’s 1984 on Goodreads:

YOU. ARE. THE. DEAD. Oh my God. I got the chills so many times toward the end of this book. It completely blew my mind. It managed to surpass my high expectations AND be nothing at all like I expected. Or in Newspeak "Double Plus Good." Let me preface this with an apology. If I sound stunningly inarticulate at times in this review, I can't help it. My mind is completely fried.

This book is like the dystopian Lord of the Rings, with its richly developed culture and economics, not to mention a fully developed language called Newspeak, or rather more of the anti-language, whose purpose is to limit speech and understanding instead of to enhance and expand it. The world-building is so fully fleshed out and spine-tinglingly terrifying that it's almost as if George travelled to such a place, escaped from it, and then just wrote it all down.

I read Fahrenheit 451 over ten years ago in my early teens. At the time, I remember really wanting to read 1984, although I never managed to get my hands on it. I'm almost glad I didn't. Though I would not have admitted it at the time, it would have gone over my head. Or at the very least, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it fully. […]

The New York Times reviews Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry :

Three-quarters of the way through Lisa Halliday’s debut novel, “Asymmetry,” a British foreign correspondent named Alistair is spending Christmas on a compound outside of Baghdad. His fellow revelers include cameramen, defense contractors, United Nations employees and aid workers. Someone’s mother has FedExed a HoneyBaked ham from Maine; people are smoking by the swimming pool. It is 2003, just days after Saddam Hussein’s capture, and though the mood is optimistic, Alistair is worrying aloud about the ethics of his chosen profession, wondering if reporting on violence doesn’t indirectly abet violence and questioning why he’d rather be in a combat zone than reading a picture book to his son. But every time he returns to London, he begins to “spin out.” He can’t go home. “You observe what people do with their freedom — what they don’t do — and it’s impossible not to judge them for it,” he says.

The line, embedded unceremoniously in the middle of a page-long paragraph, doubles, like so many others in “Asymmetry,” as literary criticism. Halliday’s novel is so strange and startlingly smart that its mere existence seems like commentary on the state of fiction. One finishes “Asymmetry” for the first or second (or like this reader, third) time and is left wondering what other writers are not doing with their freedom — and, like Alistair, judging them for it.

Despite its title, “Asymmetry” comprises two seemingly unrelated sections of equal length, appended by a slim and quietly shocking coda. Halliday’s prose is clean and lean, almost reportorial in the style of W. G. Sebald, and like the murmurings of a shy person at a cocktail party, often comic only in single clauses. It’s a first novel that reads like the work of an author who has published many books over many years. […]

Emily W. Thompson reviews Michael Doane's The Crossing on Reedsy Discovery :

In Doane’s debut novel, a young man embarks on a journey of self-discovery with surprising results.

An unnamed protagonist (The Narrator) is dealing with heartbreak. His love, determined to see the world, sets out for Portland, Oregon. But he’s a small-town boy who hasn’t traveled much. So, the Narrator mourns her loss and hides from life, throwing himself into rehabbing an old motorcycle. Until one day, he takes a leap; he packs his bike and a few belongings and heads out to find the Girl.

Following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat-Moon, Doane offers a coming of age story about a man finding himself on the backroads of America. Doane’s a gifted writer with fluid prose and insightful observations, using The Narrator’s personal interactions to illuminate the diversity of the United States.

The Narrator initially sticks to the highways, trying to make it to the West Coast as quickly as possible. But a hitchhiker named Duke convinces him to get off the beaten path and enjoy the ride. “There’s not a place that’s like any other,” [39] Dukes contends, and The Narrator realizes he’s right. Suddenly, the trip is about the journey, not just the destination. The Narrator ditches his truck and traverses the deserts and mountains on his bike. He destroys his phone, cutting off ties with his past and living only in the moment.

As he crosses the country, The Narrator connects with several unique personalities whose experiences and views deeply impact his own. Duke, the complicated cowboy and drifter, who opens The Narrator’s eyes to a larger world. Zooey, the waitress in Colorado who opens his heart and reminds him that love can be found in this big world. And Rosie, The Narrator’s sweet landlady in Portland, who helps piece him back together both physically and emotionally.

This supporting cast of characters is excellent. Duke, in particular, is wonderfully nuanced and complicated. He’s a throwback to another time, a man without a cell phone who reads Sartre and sleeps under the stars. Yet he’s also a grifter with a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” attitude that harms those around him. It’s fascinating to watch The Narrator wrestle with Duke’s behavior, trying to determine which to model and which to discard.

Doane creates a relatable protagonist in The Narrator, whose personal growth doesn’t erase his faults. His willingness to hit the road with few resources is admirable, and he’s prescient enough to recognize the jealousy of those who cannot or will not take the leap. His encounters with new foods, places, and people broaden his horizons. Yet his immaturity and selfishness persist. He tells Rosie she’s been a good mother to him but chooses to ignore the continuing concern from his own parents as he effectively disappears from his old life.

Despite his flaws, it’s a pleasure to accompany The Narrator on his physical and emotional journey. The unexpected ending is a fitting denouement to an epic and memorable road trip.

The Book Smugglers review Anissa Gray’s The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls :

I am still dipping my toes into the literally fiction pool, finding what works for me and what doesn’t. Books like The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray are definitely my cup of tea.

Althea and Proctor Cochran had been pillars of their economically disadvantaged community for years – with their local restaurant/small market and their charity drives. Until they are found guilty of fraud for stealing and keeping most of the money they raised and sent to jail. Now disgraced, their entire family is suffering the consequences, specially their twin teenage daughters Baby Vi and Kim. To complicate matters even more: Kim was actually the one to call the police on her parents after yet another fight with her mother. […]

Examples of children’s and YA fiction book reviews

The Book Hookup reviews Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give :

♥ Quick Thoughts and Rating: 5 stars! I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to tackle the voice of a movement like Black Lives Matter, but I do know that Thomas did it with a finesse only a talented author like herself possibly could. With an unapologetically realistic delivery packed with emotion, The Hate U Give is a crucially important portrayal of the difficulties minorities face in our country every single day. I have no doubt that this book will be met with resistance by some (possibly many) and slapped with a “controversial” label, but if you’ve ever wondered what it was like to walk in a POC’s shoes, then I feel like this is an unflinchingly honest place to start.

In Angie Thomas’s debut novel, Starr Carter bursts on to the YA scene with both heart-wrecking and heartwarming sincerity. This author is definitely one to watch.

♥ Review: The hype around this book has been unquestionable and, admittedly, that made me both eager to get my hands on it and terrified to read it. I mean, what if I was to be the one person that didn’t love it as much as others? (That seems silly now because of how truly mesmerizing THUG was in the most heartbreakingly realistic way.) However, with the relevancy of its summary in regards to the unjust predicaments POC currently face in the US, I knew this one was a must-read, so I was ready to set my fears aside and dive in. That said, I had an altogether more personal, ulterior motive for wanting to read this book. […]

The New York Times reviews Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood :

Alice Crewe (a last name she’s chosen for herself) is a fairy tale legacy: the granddaughter of Althea Proserpine, author of a collection of dark-as-night fairy tales called “Tales From the Hinterland.” The book has a cult following, and though Alice has never met her grandmother, she’s learned a little about her through internet research. She hasn’t read the stories, because her mother, Ella Proserpine, forbids it.

Alice and Ella have moved from place to place in an attempt to avoid the “bad luck” that seems to follow them. Weird things have happened. As a child, Alice was kidnapped by a man who took her on a road trip to find her grandmother; he was stopped by the police before they did so. When at 17 she sees that man again, unchanged despite the years, Alice panics. Then Ella goes missing, and Alice turns to Ellery Finch, a schoolmate who’s an Althea Proserpine superfan, for help in tracking down her mother. Not only has Finch read every fairy tale in the collection, but handily, he remembers them, sharing them with Alice as they journey to the mysterious Hazel Wood, the estate of her now-dead grandmother, where they hope to find Ella.

“The Hazel Wood” starts out strange and gets stranger, in the best way possible. (The fairy stories Finch relays, which Albert includes as their own chapters, are as creepy and evocative as you’d hope.) Albert seamlessly combines contemporary realism with fantasy, blurring the edges in a way that highlights that place where stories and real life convene, where magic contains truth and the world as it appears is false, where just about anything can happen, particularly in the pages of a very good book. It’s a captivating debut. […]

James reviews Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight, Moon on Goodreads:

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is one of the books that followers of my blog voted as a must-read for our Children's Book August 2018 Readathon. Come check it out and join the next few weeks!

This picture book was such a delight. I hadn't remembered reading it when I was a child, but it might have been read to me... either way, it was like a whole new experience! It's always so difficult to convince a child to fall asleep at night. I don't have kids, but I do have a 5-month-old puppy who whines for 5 minutes every night when he goes in his cage/crate (hopefully he'll be fully housebroken soon so he can roam around when he wants). I can only imagine! I babysat a lot as a teenager and I have tons of younger cousins, nieces, and nephews, so I've been through it before, too. This was a believable experience, and it really helps show kids how to relax and just let go when it's time to sleep.

The bunny's are adorable. The rhymes are exquisite. I found it pretty fun, but possibly a little dated given many of those things aren't normal routines anymore. But the lessons to take from it are still powerful. Loved it! I want to sample some more books by this fine author and her illustrators.

Publishers Weekly reviews Elizabeth Lilly’s Geraldine :

This funny, thoroughly accomplished debut opens with two words: “I’m moving.” They’re spoken by the title character while she swoons across her family’s ottoman, and because Geraldine is a giraffe, her full-on melancholy mode is quite a spectacle. But while Geraldine may be a drama queen (even her mother says so), it won’t take readers long to warm up to her. The move takes Geraldine from Giraffe City, where everyone is like her, to a new school, where everyone else is human. Suddenly, the former extrovert becomes “That Giraffe Girl,” and all she wants to do is hide, which is pretty much impossible. “Even my voice tries to hide,” she says, in the book’s most poignant moment. “It’s gotten quiet and whispery.” Then she meets Cassie, who, though human, is also an outlier (“I’m that girl who wears glasses and likes MATH and always organizes her food”), and things begin to look up.

Lilly’s watercolor-and-ink drawings are as vividly comic and emotionally astute as her writing; just when readers think there are no more ways for Geraldine to contort her long neck, this highly promising talent comes up with something new.

Examples of genre fiction book reviews

Karlyn P reviews Nora Roberts’ Dark Witch , a paranormal romance novel , on Goodreads:

4 stars. Great world-building, weak romance, but still worth the read.

I hesitate to describe this book as a 'romance' novel simply because the book spent little time actually exploring the romance between Iona and Boyle. Sure, there IS a romance in this novel. Sprinkled throughout the book are a few scenes where Iona and Boyle meet, chat, wink at each, flirt some more, sleep together, have a misunderstanding, make up, and then profess their undying love. Very formulaic stuff, and all woven around the more important parts of this book.

The meat of this book is far more focused on the story of the Dark witch and her magically-gifted descendants living in Ireland. Despite being weak on the romance, I really enjoyed it. I think the book is probably better for it, because the romance itself was pretty lackluster stuff.

I absolutely plan to stick with this series as I enjoyed the world building, loved the Ireland setting, and was intrigued by all of the secondary characters. However, If you read Nora Roberts strictly for the romance scenes, this one might disappoint. But if you enjoy a solid background story with some dark magic and prophesies, you might enjoy it as much as I did.

I listened to this one on audio, and felt the narration was excellent.

Emily May reviews R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy Wars , an epic fantasy novel , on Goodreads:

“But I warn you, little warrior. The price of power is pain.”

Holy hell, what did I just read??

➽ A fantasy military school

➽ A rich world based on modern Chinese history

➽ Shamans and gods

➽ Detailed characterization leading to unforgettable characters

➽ Adorable, opium-smoking mentors

That's a basic list, but this book is all of that and SO MUCH MORE. I know 100% that The Poppy War will be one of my best reads of 2018.

Isn't it just so great when you find one of those books that completely drags you in, makes you fall in love with the characters, and demands that you sit on the edge of your seat for every horrific, nail-biting moment of it? This is one of those books for me. And I must issue a serious content warning: this book explores some very dark themes. Proceed with caution (or not at all) if you are particularly sensitive to scenes of war, drug use and addiction, genocide, racism, sexism, ableism, self-harm, torture, and rape (off-page but extremely horrific).

Because, despite the fairly innocuous first 200 pages, the title speaks the truth: this is a book about war. All of its horrors and atrocities. It is not sugar-coated, and it is often graphic. The "poppy" aspect refers to opium, which is a big part of this book. It is a fantasy, but the book draws inspiration from the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanking.

Crime Fiction Lover reviews Jessica Barry’s Freefall , a crime novel:

In some crime novels, the wrongdoing hits you between the eyes from page one. With others it’s a more subtle process, and that’s OK too. So where does Freefall fit into the sliding scale?

In truth, it’s not clear. This is a novel with a thrilling concept at its core. A woman survives plane crash, then runs for her life. However, it is the subtleties at play that will draw you in like a spider beckoning to an unwitting fly.

Like the heroine in Sharon Bolton’s Dead Woman Walking, Allison is lucky to be alive. She was the only passenger in a private plane, belonging to her fiancé, Ben, who was piloting the expensive aircraft, when it came down in woodlands in the Colorado Rockies. Ally is also the only survivor, but rather than sitting back and waiting for rescue, she is soon pulling together items that may help her survive a little longer – first aid kit, energy bars, warm clothes, trainers – before fleeing the scene. If you’re hearing the faint sound of alarm bells ringing, get used to it. There’s much, much more to learn about Ally before this tale is over.

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One , a science-fiction novel :

Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.

The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three.

Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.

Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.

Book review examples for non-fiction books

Nonfiction books are generally written to inform readers about a certain topic. As such, the focus of a nonfiction book review will be on the clarity and effectiveness of this communication . In carrying this out, a book review may analyze the author’s source materials and assess the thesis in order to determine whether or not the book meets expectations.

Again, we’ve included abbreviated versions of long reviews here, so feel free to click on the link to read the entire piece!

The Washington Post reviews David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon :

The arc of David Grann’s career reminds one of a software whiz-kid or a latest-thing talk-show host — certainly not an investigative reporter, even if he is one of the best in the business. The newly released movie of his first book, “The Lost City of Z,” is generating all kinds of Oscar talk, and now comes the release of his second book, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” the film rights to which have already been sold for $5 million in what one industry journal called the “biggest and wildest book rights auction in memory.”

Grann deserves the attention. He’s canny about the stories he chases, he’s willing to go anywhere to chase them, and he’s a maestro in his ability to parcel out information at just the right clip: a hint here, a shading of meaning there, a smartly paced buildup of multiple possibilities followed by an inevitable reversal of readerly expectations or, in some cases, by a thrilling and dislocating pull of the entire narrative rug.

All of these strengths are on display in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Around the turn of the 20th century, oil was discovered underneath Osage lands in the Oklahoma Territory, lands that were soon to become part of the state of Oklahoma. Through foresight and legal maneuvering, the Osage found a way to permanently attach that oil to themselves and shield it from the prying hands of white interlopers; this mechanism was known as “headrights,” which forbade the outright sale of oil rights and granted each full member of the tribe — and, supposedly, no one else — a share in the proceeds from any lease arrangement. For a while, the fail-safes did their job, and the Osage got rich — diamond-ring and chauffeured-car and imported-French-fashion rich — following which quite a large group of white men started to work like devils to separate the Osage from their money. And soon enough, and predictably enough, this work involved murder. Here in Jazz Age America’s most isolated of locales, dozens or even hundreds of Osage in possession of great fortunes — and of the potential for even greater fortunes in the future — were dispatched by poison, by gunshot and by dynamite. […]

Stacked Books reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers :

I’ve heard a lot of great things about Malcolm Gladwell’s writing. Friends and co-workers tell me that his subjects are interesting and his writing style is easy to follow without talking down to the reader. I wasn’t disappointed with Outliers. In it, Gladwell tackles the subject of success – how people obtain it and what contributes to extraordinary success as opposed to everyday success.

The thesis – that our success depends much more on circumstances out of our control than any effort we put forth – isn’t exactly revolutionary. Most of us know it to be true. However, I don’t think I’m lying when I say that most of us also believe that we if we just try that much harder and develop our talent that much further, it will be enough to become wildly successful, despite bad or just mediocre beginnings. Not so, says Gladwell.

Most of the evidence Gladwell gives us is anecdotal, which is my favorite kind to read. I can’t really speak to how scientifically valid it is, but it sure makes for engrossing listening. For example, did you know that successful hockey players are almost all born in January, February, or March? Kids born during these months are older than the others kids when they start playing in the youth leagues, which means they’re already better at the game (because they’re bigger). Thus, they get more play time, which means their skill increases at a faster rate, and it compounds as time goes by. Within a few years, they’re much, much better than the kids born just a few months later in the year. Basically, these kids’ birthdates are a huge factor in their success as adults – and it’s nothing they can do anything about. If anyone could make hockey interesting to a Texan who only grudgingly admits the sport even exists, it’s Gladwell. […]

Quill and Quire reviews Rick Prashaw’s Soar, Adam, Soar :

Ten years ago, I read a book called Almost Perfect. The young-adult novel by Brian Katcher won some awards and was held up as a powerful, nuanced portrayal of a young trans person. But the reality did not live up to the book’s billing. Instead, it turned out to be a one-dimensional and highly fetishized portrait of a trans person’s life, one that was nevertheless repeatedly dubbed “realistic” and “affecting” by non-transgender readers possessing only a vague, mass-market understanding of trans experiences.

In the intervening decade, trans narratives have emerged further into the literary spotlight, but those authored by trans people ourselves – and by trans men in particular – have seemed to fall under the shadow of cisgender sensationalized imaginings. Two current Canadian releases – Soar, Adam, Soar and This One Looks Like a Boy – provide a pointed object lesson into why trans-authored work about transgender experiences remains critical.

To be fair, Soar, Adam, Soar isn’t just a story about a trans man. It’s also a story about epilepsy, the medical establishment, and coming of age as seen through a grieving father’s eyes. Adam, Prashaw’s trans son, died unexpectedly at age 22. Woven through the elder Prashaw’s narrative are excerpts from Adam’s social media posts, giving us glimpses into the young man’s interior life as he traverses his late teens and early 20s. […]

Book Geeks reviews Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love :

WRITING STYLE: 3.5/5

SUBJECT: 4/5

CANDIDNESS: 4.5/5

RELEVANCE: 3.5/5

ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3.5/5

“Eat Pray Love” is so popular that it is almost impossible to not read it. Having felt ashamed many times on my not having read this book, I quietly ordered the book (before I saw the movie) from amazon.in and sat down to read it. I don’t remember what I expected it to be – maybe more like a chick lit thing but it turned out quite different. The book is a real story and is a short journal from the time when its writer went travelling to three different countries in pursuit of three different things – Italy (Pleasure), India (Spirituality), Bali (Balance) and this is what corresponds to the book’s name – EAT (in Italy), PRAY (in India) and LOVE (in Bali, Indonesia). These are also the three Is – ITALY, INDIA, INDONESIA.

Though she had everything a middle-aged American woman can aspire for – MONEY, CAREER, FRIENDS, HUSBAND; Elizabeth was not happy in her life, she wasn’t happy in her marriage. Having suffered a terrible divorce and terrible breakup soon after, Elizabeth was shattered. She didn’t know where to go and what to do – all she knew was that she wanted to run away. So she set out on a weird adventure – she will go to three countries in a year and see if she can find out what she was looking for in life. This book is about that life changing journey that she takes for one whole year. […]

Emily May reviews Michelle Obama’s Becoming on Goodreads:

Look, I'm not a happy crier. I might cry at songs about leaving and missing someone; I might cry at books where things don't work out; I might cry at movies where someone dies. I've just never really understood why people get all choked up over happy, inspirational things. But Michelle Obama's kindness and empathy changed that. This book had me in tears for all the right reasons.

This is not really a book about politics, though political experiences obviously do come into it. It's a shame that some will dismiss this book because of a difference in political opinion, when it is really about a woman's life. About growing up poor and black on the South Side of Chicago; about getting married and struggling to maintain that marriage; about motherhood; about being thrown into an amazing and terrifying position.

I hate words like "inspirational" because they've become so overdone and cheesy, but I just have to say it-- Michelle Obama is an inspiration. I had the privilege of seeing her speak at The Forum in Inglewood, and she is one of the warmest, funniest, smartest, down-to-earth people I have ever seen in this world.

And yes, I know we present what we want the world to see, but I truly do think it's genuine. I think she is someone who really cares about people - especially kids - and wants to give them better lives and opportunities.

She's obviously intelligent, but she also doesn't gussy up her words. She talks straight, with an openness and honesty rarely seen. She's been one of the most powerful women in the world, she's been a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, she's had her own successful career, and yet she has remained throughout that same girl - Michelle Robinson - from a working class family in Chicago.

I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't benefit from reading this book.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better idea of how to write a book review. You might be wondering how to put all of this knowledge into action now! Many book reviewers start out by setting up a book blog. If you don’t have time to research the intricacies of HTML, check out Reedsy Discovery — where you can read indie books for free and review them without going through the hassle of creating a blog. To register as a book reviewer , go here .

And if you’d like to see even more book review examples, simply go to this directory of book review blogs and click on any one of them to see a wealth of good book reviews. Beyond that, it's up to you to pick up a book and pen — and start reviewing!

Continue reading

33 Best Vampire Books to Sink Your Teeth Into

From the reported reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the explosive success of Twilight, there’s no question about it: vampires are “in” right now. At once dangerous, bloodthirsty, and sensual, vampires are the perfect villains to mesmerize both protagonists an...

The Best Book Review Sites For Enthusiastic Readers

There are endless review blogs and book review sites that you can peruse, though not every one of them features a wide enough variety to help you. But don’t worry: we’ve got you covered with ten of the best book review sites to satisfy the bookworm in you.

Read for Charity: What You Can Do This June

We all love reading challenges — but you know what’s even better than setting records and out-reading your friends? Reading to raise money for a great cause.That’s why this June, Reedsy Discovery is partnering with Room to Read to raise money for child literacy and g...

Heard about Reedsy Discovery?

Trust real people, not robots, to give you book recommendations.

Or sign up with an

Or sign up with your social account

Submit your book
Reviewer directory

Discovery | Reviewer | Version A | 2024-01

Want to be a book reviewer?

Review new books and start building your portfolio.

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Literary Genres — Novel

Essays on Novel

The presence of supernatural elements is a defining characteristic of Gothic literature, serving not only to create an atmosphere of fear and suspense but also to explore deeper themes of human psychology, morality, and the unknown. By integrating ghosts, curses, and other unearthly phenomena, Gothic novels delve into the complexities of the human mind, societal fears, and the thin line between reality and the supernatural.

Analyzing the role of supernatural elements in Gothic literature offers valuable insights into the historical and cultural contexts from which these works emerged. It allows for an exploration of how authors use the supernatural to challenge readers' perceptions and to comment on issues of their time. Furthermore, such an essay can illuminate the enduring appeal of the supernatural in storytelling and its impact on readers' engagement and imagination. Writing on this theme encourages critical thinking about the ways in which the supernatural influences narrative structure, character development, and themes, making it a rich topic for literary analysis.

Summary of Tumba by Mira Canion

Analysis of junot diaz's wildwood, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Analysis of "Madame Sun Lin Hoo Killed Sam Westing"

Summary and main themes of the novel atonement, analysis of 'little women' as a feminist novel, ignatius and irene: partnership and polarization, let us write you an essay from scratch.

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

The Construction of Identity in Fight Club

Similarities between 'all the light we cannot see' and 'life is beautiful', important lessons in little women by louisa may alcott, a theme of fear in the alchemist by paulo coelho, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Ancestral Trauma in Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Little women: deconstructing gender roles and expectations, the alchemist: the importance of following dreams, erasure in change-rae lee’s "a gesture life", the manipulation of western tropes in all the pretty horses, a story about a yo-yo: how catch-22 comes full circle without being circular, understanding the ideology in the works of h.e. bates, isabel allende, and thea astley, fatum and its impact on pechorin and bazarov, analysis of judge dee as good magistrate, the role of interior the hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet, elements for attaining a balanced psyche; in the skin of a lion, both poor and rich have an opportunity to voice feelings, purpose of communication in 'the dew breaker', liberal feminism in the house of the spirits, plato’s ideal society in oryx and crake, "a time of togetherness": how alexie sherman and velma wallis use christmas to present contemporary native american issues, bulgakov’s devil: not so evil after all: gnostic elements in the master and margarita, the significance of symbols in literary works by jackson and behr, dueling narrators: exploring narrative distance in tracks, white flight: the graying of suburbia in delillo’s white noise, relevant topics.

Science Fiction
Courtly Love
Short Story

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Descriptive Essay

Descriptive essay generator.

Essays are written due to various reasons and purposes. Some of the authors want to inform, some want to expose while some want to persuade. However, in descriptive essay writing , the essayist composes for the sake of displaying a picture out of his/her describing words. It may sound easy and simple but don’t be deceived, there are still more to learn. Read through this article to get hold of significant and beneficial new knowledge.

What is Descriptive Essay?

Descriptive Essay Bundle

Download Descriptive Essay Bundle

Descriptive Essay Format

Introduction.

Hook: Start with a sentence that captures the reader’s attention. This could be a striking fact, a question, or a vivid description. Context: Provide some background information to set the scene. Describe the setting, the situation, or the object of the essay. Thesis Statement: End the introduction with a clear thesis statement that outlines the main aspects or the overall impression of your subject.

Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should focus on a specific aspect or a detail that contributes to the overall picture you are trying to paint. Use the “show, don’t tell” technique by employing vivid imagery and sensory details.

Paragraph 1: Sight

Topic Sentence: Introduce the aspect of sight. Details: Describe what you see in vivid detail. Use adjectives and adverbs to bring the scene to life. Closing Sentence: Wrap up the paragraph by summarizing the importance of the visual details.

Paragraph 2: Sound

Topic Sentence: Focus on the sounds related to your topic. Details: Describe what can be heard, whether it’s the background noise, a specific sound related to the subject, or the absence of sound. Closing Sentence: Conclude by explaining how the sounds contribute to the overall impression.

Paragraph 3: Smell

Topic Sentence: Highlight the aspect of smell. Details: Describe the aromas and scents. Whether it’s pleasant or pungent, detail how it impacts the scene or the subject. Closing Sentence: Summarize how the smell adds to the depth of your description.

Paragraph 4: Touch

Topic Sentence: Discuss the sense of touch. Details: Describe the textures and temperatures. Explain how something feels to the touch and why it’s important to your description. Closing Sentence: Link the tactile details to the overall experience.

Paragraph 5: Taste (if applicable)

Topic Sentence: Introduce the sense of taste, if relevant. Details: Describe the flavors and the experience of tasting something related to your subject. Closing Sentence: Reflect on how taste enhances the description.

Summary: Briefly restate your thesis and summarize the main points of your essay. Significance: Explain the significance of the subject and the impact it has made on you or the impression it leaves. Closing Thought: End with a final thought or reflection, leaving the reader with something to ponder.

Example of Descriptive Essay

“The Sunset at the Beach” As I walked down the sandy path towards the ocean, the first thing that struck me was the vast expanse of the sea, stretching endlessly towards the horizon. The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in shades of orange, pink, and purple. The beauty of the sunset at the beach was a breathtaking spectacle that I had come to witness. Introduction The beach has always been a place of serenity for me, especially during the sunset. The way the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving behind a tapestry of colors, always seemed magical. On this particular evening, the scene was set for a perfect display of nature’s artistry. Body Paragraphs The Vision of the Sunset As I stepped onto the soft, warm sand, my eyes were immediately drawn to the horizon. The sun, a fiery orb, was slowly descending, casting its golden glow across the sky. The clouds, mere wisps earlier in the day, now looked like cotton candy, stained with hues of pink and lavender. The reflection of the sunset on the water added a layer of brilliance to the scene, with the light dancing on the waves as they gently lapped against the shore. The Symphony of the Waves The sound of the waves provided a soothing background melody to the visual spectacle. Each wave crashed against the shore with a rhythm that was both calming and invigorating. In the distance, seagulls called to one another, their cries adding to the orchestral performance of nature. The rustling of the palm leaves in the gentle breeze played a soft, whispering harmony, creating a symphony that only the beach at sunset could offer. The Aromatic Breeze With every breath, the salty tang of the sea air filled my lungs, a distinctive aroma that immediately relaxed my body and mind. There was a freshness to it, a reminder of the vast, untamed ocean before me. Mixed with the faint scent of sunscreen and the earthiness of wet sand, the beach’s aroma was invigorating, grounding me in the moment. The Touch of Nature As I walked along the water’s edge, the cool water washed over my feet, providing relief from the day’s residual heat. The sand, now cooler than the afternoon sun, felt soft and comforting beneath my toes. Occasionally, a stronger wave would rush further up the beach, encouraging me to dig my feet into the sand, feeling the grains shift against my skin. Conclusion The sunset at the beach was not just a visual masterpiece; it was an experience that engaged all the senses. As the sun finally disappeared, leaving behind a sky painted in dark blues and purples, I felt a sense of peace and contentment. The beach at sunset had offered me a moment of beauty, tranquility, and a deep connection with nature. It was an unforgettable scene, etched in my memory, reminding me of the simple, yet profound joys of life.

Descriptive essays generally focus more on visualizing a specific topic of interest. Considering that aspect, showing you what it looks like may be helpful as well. Thus, we cautiously gathered the best samples and templates of descriptive essays for you to rely on, here are they:

Descriptive Essay For Kids

Descriptive Essay For Students

Descriptive Essay About a Person

More Descriptive Essay Examples & Templates

Descriptive Essay Thesis Statement
Descriptive Essay About a Place
Descriptive Essay For Grade 5
Event Descriptive Essay
Descriptive Essay about School

Descriptive Essay Examples & Templates

Descriptive narrative essay example.

High School Descriptive Essay Example

Basic Descriptive Essay Writing Example

Short Descriptive Essay Example

Educational Descriptive Essay Example

Basic Descriptive Essay Example

Sample Descriptive Essay Example

Professional Descriptive Essay

Assignment Descriptive Essay Example

How to Write Descriptive Essay?

A descriptive essay aims to provide a detailed and vivid description of a person, place, object, or event, so that the reader can visualize and experience it as if they were present. To craft an effective descriptive essay, follow these steps:

Choose a Topic

Pick something specific to describe, such as: A memorable place (like a beach, park, or school) A person who made an impact on you An object that holds special meaning An event you remember vividly (a concert, festival, or family gathering)

Create a Thesis Statement

Even in a descriptive essay, it’s important to have a thesis or a central idea that guides your description. The thesis should express the importance or significance of what you’re describing. Example: Thesis for a Place : “The beach has always been my escape, a place where I find peace and solitude.” Thesis for a Person : “My grandmother’s kindness and strength have made her the cornerstone of our family.”

Use Sensory Details

Engage the reader’s senses by describing how the subject looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels. Sensory details help paint a vivid picture. Sight : “The trees stood tall, their branches swaying in the soft breeze.” Sound : “The distant sound of waves crashing was a constant, calming background noise.” Smell : “The sweet smell of freshly baked bread filled the air.” Touch : “The sand felt warm and grainy beneath my feet.”

Organize Your Essay

A descriptive essay typically follows a structure of introduction, body, and conclusion: Introduction : Introduce your subject and provide your thesis statement. Body Paragraphs : Each paragraph should focus on a different aspect of your subject, such as its appearance, behavior, or the emotions it evokes. Conclusion : Wrap up by reflecting on the importance of what you’ve described and how it affects you or others.

Use Figurative Language

Incorporate metaphors, similes, and personification to make your description more vivid and interesting. Simile : “The lake was as still as a mirror, reflecting the trees perfectly.” Metaphor : “The sun was a golden orb sinking into the horizon.” Personification : “The wind whispered softly through the trees.”

Show, Don’t Tell

Instead of telling the reader what something is like, show them by providing specific details that allow them to experience it. Avoid vague language like “beautiful” or “amazing” and instead describe exactly what makes it so. Example: Telling : “The beach was beautiful.” Showing : “The golden sand stretched out for miles, glistening under the warm afternoon sun, while the crystal-clear water sparkled with every wave.”

Use Clear and Concise Language

Make your descriptions clear and avoid unnecessary words or overly complex sentences. Be sure to stay focused on your subject without straying into unrelated details.

Revise and Edit

After writing your essay, take time to revise it. Look for: Clear descriptions Strong sensory details Proper organization of ideas Consistency in tone and style

Types of Descriptive Essay

A descriptive essay focuses on providing a detailed description of a person, place, object, or event. There are different types of descriptive essays, each focusing on a particular aspect of description:

Personal Descriptive Essay Describes a person, object, or event that holds personal significance, such as a family member, a memorable location, or a specific experience.
Imaginative Descriptive Essay Describes something that doesn’t exist or is fictional, like a fantasy landscape, imaginary creature, or futuristic city.
Objective Descriptive Essay Provides a factual and unbiased description of something, avoiding personal feelings or opinions. It focuses on the physical attributes and features, such as describing a building, machine, or process.
Subjective Descriptive Essay Involves personal impressions, emotions, or interpretations, often describing something from the writer’s personal perspective or feelings, like a sunset or a favorite vacation spot.
Event Descriptive Essay Focuses on describing an event in great detail, such as a wedding, festival, or important historical moment, emphasizing its atmosphere and significance.

Each type of descriptive essay requires vivid language, sensory details, and organized structure to effectively convey the description.

Tips of Descriptive Essay

Here are some useful tips for writing a descriptive essay:

Choose a Specific Topic Focus on a single object, event, person, or experience to avoid overwhelming details and maintain clarity.
Use Sensory Details Engage the reader’s senses by describing how things look, sound, smell, feel, and taste to create a vivid picture.
Show, Don’t Tell Instead of just telling the reader how something is, show them through descriptive language and concrete imagery. For example, instead of saying “The cake was delicious,” describe its flavor, texture, and smell.
Organize Your Description Structure your essay logically. You can organize it spatially (describing from one location to another), chronologically, or from general to specific.
Use Figurative Language Enhance your descriptions with metaphors, similes, and personification to make your writing more engaging and relatable.
Focus on a Dominant Impression Convey a specific mood, feeling, or overall impression that you want the reader to take away from your description.
Revise for Clarity After writing, revise your essay to ensure that your descriptions are clear, precise, and free of unnecessary details.
Use Strong Vocabulary Choose vivid and appropriate words to paint an accurate and colorful picture. Avoid repetitive or vague language.
Stay Objective or Subjective (As Needed) Depending on the type of descriptive essay, decide whether you’ll remain objective (factual) or subjective (personal feelings).
Edit for Grammar and Flow Ensure the essay flows smoothly, with good transitions between descriptions. Check for grammar, punctuation, and sentence variety.

What is the main purpose of a descriptive essay?

The main purpose is to provide the reader with a vivid and immersive experience of the subject being described. It aims to help the reader visualize, understand, and feel the essence of what is being described.

How long should a descriptive essay be?

A descriptive essay can vary in length, but it typically ranges from 500 to 1000 words, depending on the depth of description and the level of detail required by the topic.

How do I conclude a descriptive essay?

Conclude by summarizing the key points of your description and reinforcing the dominant impression you want the reader to leave with. Avoid introducing new details in the conclusion.

What are common mistakes to avoid in a descriptive essay?

Overloading the essay with unnecessary details Using vague or repetitive language Failing to organize the description logically Neglecting sensory details Focusing too much on telling instead of showing

Can I describe more than one object or person in my descriptive essay?

While it’s possible to describe multiple objects or people, it’s generally better to focus on one to avoid overwhelming the reader with too much information. If describing multiple subjects, ensure that they are closely related and contribute to a unified impression.

What kind of language should I use in a descriptive essay?

Use vivid, sensory language that appeals to the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste). Avoid vague words and clichés, and opt for strong adjectives, verbs, and figures of speech like similes and metaphors.

Text prompt

Instructive
Professional

Write a descriptive essay about a place you love to visit and what makes it special.

Describe in a descriptive essay your dream job and what it would be like to work there.

COMMENTS

Novel Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas
Novel - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas. 185 essay samples found. A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. Essays might discuss the evolution of the novel as a literary form, analyze specific novels or authors, explore themes and stylistic features of novels, or discuss the ...
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
Table of contents. Step 1: Reading the text and identifying literary devices. Step 2: Coming up with a thesis. Step 3: Writing a title and introduction. Step 4: Writing the body of the essay. Step 5: Writing a conclusion. Other interesting articles.
How to Write an Essay about a Novel
Step 2. Pick 3 elements you are most comfortable with. In this step, we'll use what I call The Power of Three. You don't need more than three elements to write an excellent essay about a novel or a book. Just pick three from the list you just created with which you are most familiar or that you understand the best.
Example of an Insightful Literary Analysis Essay
Get a sense of what to do right with this literary analysis essay example that will offer inspiration for your own assignment. ... Students can sometimes choose the story, novel, or book series they wish to write about, and they learn to use quotes from the text to support their thesis statements.
The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade ‹ Literary Hub
Hilton Als, White Girls (2013) In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als' breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls, which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book.
Analyzing Novels & Short Stories
Analyzing Novels & Short Stories. Literary analysis looks critically at a work of fiction in order to understand how the parts contribute to the whole. When analyzing a novel or short story, you'll need to consider elements such as the context, setting, characters, plot, literary devices, and themes. Remember that a literary analysis isn't ...
Literary Analysis: Sample Essay
Literary Analysis: Sample Essay. We turn once more to Joanna Wolfe's and Laura Wilder's Digging into Literature: Strategies for Reading, Writing, and Analysis (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016) in order to show you their example of a strong student essay that has a strong central claim elucidated by multiple surface/depth arguments ...
PDF HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY
essay is the body. In this section you present the paragraphs (at least 3 paragraphs for a 500-750 word essay) that support your thesis statement. Good literary analysis essays contain an explanation of your ideas and evidence from the text (short story, poem, play) that supports those ideas. Textual evidence consists of summary,
Student Essay Example 2 (Literary Analysis) in MLA
Attributions. Images and video created by Dr. Sandi Van Lieu and licensed under CC BY NC SA. Student essay example by Janelle Devin and used with permission. Previous: Sample Paper in MLA and APA. Next: YC Writing Resources.
Novel Essays: Samples & Topics
Introduction Brooklyn (2015), directed by John Crowley takes place in New York City during the 1950s. The film is a romantic historical film that is based on the novel of the same name by Colm Toibin. It tells the story of a young Irish immigrant... Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.
50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee "How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to ...
17 Book Review Examples to Help You Write the Perfect Review
It is a fantasy, but the book draws inspiration from the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanking. Crime Fiction Lover reviews Jessica Barry's Freefall, a crime novel: In some crime novels, the wrongdoing hits you between the eyes from page one. With others it's a more subtle process, and that's OK too.
Novel Analysis Essay Examples
Stuck on your essay? Browse essays about Novel Analysis and find inspiration. Learn by example and become a better writer with Kibin's suite of essay help services. > Novel Analysis Essay Examples. 309 total results ... Novel Analysis Essay Examples. 309 total results. staff pick.
The Four Main Types of Essay
Expository essay example paragraph. The invention of the printing press in 1440 changed this situation dramatically. Johannes Gutenberg, who had worked as a goldsmith, used his knowledge of metals in the design of the press. ... A literary analysis essay presents a close reading of a work of literature—e.g. a poem or novel—to explore the ...
≡Essays on Novel. Free Examples of Research Paper Topics, Titles
3 pages / 1523 words. Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott composed soon after the Civil War in light of a publisher's interest for a novel, which was initially distributed in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, as two books. Little Women transcends many of... Little Women Novel. 6.
Descriptive Essay
Essays are written due to various reasons and purposes. Some of the authors want to inform, some want to expose while some want to persuade. However, in descriptive essay writing, the essayist composes for the sake of displaying a picture out of his/her describing words.It may sound easy and simple but don't be deceived, there are still more to learn.
Example of a Great Essay
Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks. Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson. Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes. This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction, focused paragraphs, clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion.
How to Write an Essay Introduction
Table of contents. Step 1: Hook your reader. Step 2: Give background information. Step 3: Present your thesis statement. Step 4: Map your essay's structure. Step 5: Check and revise. More examples of essay introductions. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.
How to Structure an Essay
The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body. This article provides useful templates and tips to help you outline your essay, make decisions about your structure, and ...