The Story of the Novel

As George Watson playfully observes, the story is the best thing about a novel. The deliberately ambiguous title of his book reflects the fact that it combines a study of the art of narrative with the history of the novel as a literary form, since its emergence some three centuries ago. Employing a thematic approach, the author moves from one aspect of narrative to another rather than discussing novelists chronologically. The book considers various kinds of novels, such as the memoir novel and d…