Auyoung, Elaine, When Fiction Feels Real: Representation and the Reading Mind

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Elaine Auyoung, When Fiction Feels Real: Representation and the Reading Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 164 pp. £68.00 Hb. £14.99 Pb. ISBN: 9780190845476

It is a well-known fact that realist novels are characterized by their verisimilitude. In When Fiction Feels Real, Elaine Auyoung sets out to explore some of the ways these texts achieve this and how they put readers ‘into relation with fictional persons and worlds that seem at once palpably real and forever out of reach’ (19). Delving into the complexities of the literary experience, Auyoung challenges long-held beliefs and offers fresh insights into the ways in which novels can shape our understanding of the world. By drawing on a variety of fields and methods including close reading, the psychology of reading, and cognitive criticism, Auyoung aims to forge an original direction in literary scholarship by linking ‘novelistic technique and reader response’ (2).

Auyoung’s premise might be uniquely defined, however in practice her methods follow very much the likes of Terence Cave and David Herman, focusing on how texts actively invite readers to immerse themselves in and experience different fictional worlds and characters. Her objective centers around the quest for a ‘more precise understanding of the reading process’, by ‘revisit[ing] and revis[ing] long-standing assumptions about what happens when we read, what novels do to their readers, and how language works’ (4).

According to the author, the book intends to provide literary scholars with tools for studying elements such as the similarities between fictional settings and characters and real-life ones, as well as the sensory effects induced by reading. Therefore, Auyoung’s exploration extends to the topic of human emotion as she examines the emotional connections readers develop with characters, which she finds resemble those between real people, akin to the theory of parasocial relationships. In each of her chapter-length case studies, Auyoung resorts to details from her chosen texts to make her point. Although this approach can be either entirely absorbing or, on the contrary, alienating for her readers, it remains pertinent to the type of discussion Auyoung engages in.

For her first chapter, Auyoung turns to Tolstoy, whose literary works have always been praised for their ability to conjure a vivid sense of reality. Her analysis concentrates on the author’s masterly use of distinct details that ‘assist readers with comprehending the sensory and affective properties of the represented fictional world’ (20). With his meticulous descriptions of ordinary physical actions, Tolstoy’s prose triggers his readers’ embodied memory acquiring, thereby, a remarkable sense of imminence and depth. Auyoung aptly points out that setting this cognitive (and physical) process into motion is what enables readers to fill in the gaps offered by the text and, in turn, comprehend the narrated events with ease. The quantity of information coupled with Tolstoy’s deliberately slow pacing demands readers spend more time with the fictional characters, leading to an enhanced connection between them because of the effort and time spent.

The second chapter of the book turns to Jane Austen’s works, with a particular focus on her characters. Auyoung’s thesis is based on readers’ remarks expressing a sense of familiarity with Austen’s characters, as if they really knew them. Although this intimacy is perceived, its construction remains elusive. As Auyoung explains, this may be partially because contemporary critics consider it naive for readers to care about fictional characters since, essentially, they are just words on a page. However, the author, persistent in overcoming that hindering assumption, maintains that it is reasonable for readers to respond to literary characters while being fully aware of their fictionality. Auyoung’s position is that readers care about fictional characters not because they forget their non-existence, but because they react to the information provided by the text. Auyoung is interested in the mechanisms used by Austen to make her characters (even those not psychologically complex) appear so lifelike and draws thought-provoking parallels between the process of forming impressions of literary characters and that of forming impressions of actual human beings, highlighting the ways in which texts facilitate this cognitive process. She underscores that, unlike real-life interactions, where individuals must rely on subtle cues and social context to discern personality traits, narratives often provide explicit cues and descriptions that guide the reader’s engagement with literary characters.

For her third chapter, Auyoung turns to matters of structure and relationality finding her examples in the Dickensian œuvre. The author asserts that the organization of a text has a significant impact on a reader’s ability to interpret, retain, and recall narrative information. Specifically, Auyoung argues, it is easier to remember information when it is causally interlinked rather than when it is presented as a list of independent events. However, instead of discussing explicit plot links here, Auyoung uses the motif of (co-)hyponomy and superordinate categories to illustrate how this type of connection, examples of which she finds plenty in Dickens’s Bleak House, facilitates and challenges readers’ retention of information. Despite offering a valuable perspective that leads to a meaningful analysis, Auyoung’s argument could have benefitted from a wider range of examples instead of relying on excerpts of the same pattern.

Next, Auyoung examines George Eliot’s work as an example of how writers strive to create experiences that are as close to first-hand perception as possible. In Eliot’s early work, Auyoung concentrates on the author’s use of narrators who, being intrusive enough, intervene to guide readers through the narrative. In fact, Eliot’s narrators, Auyoung claims, are even conscious of the fact there are limits both to the quality and quantity of information readers are able to comprehend simply by reading, if they have not already encountered something similar in their own lives, highlighting the discrepancy between our perception of the world per se, and the way we use language to describe and talk about it. According to Auyoung, this does not result in an unsatisfactory reading experience, but rather gives the narrative world more depth, based also on the idea that ‘experiences can seem better when readers have limited access to them’ (90).

The most interesting chapter in Auyoung’s book might well be her final one; this discusses the phenomenological significance of the completion of a literary text and the subsequent feelings of loss and separation that readers experience, a stage which arguably has received less critical attention. However, the effectiveness of the direction Auyoung takes to handle this is debatable. Although she departs from a very interesting premise, she continues to discuss Thomas Hardy’s elegies as a way to draw parallels between Hardy’s depictions of grief and the loss readers may experience when finishing a novel. Since the author herself admits that there is scarce scholarship available to help understand this dimension of reading ‘that has largely been ignored’ (98), it would have been interesting to see her attempt to contribute to this instead of deviating from the challenge.

I would be reluctant to claim that this work stands out for its innovative theoretical scope. However, looking beyond that, the book offers its readers a range of case studies in which they can see how cognitive approaches to reading function in practice. I think this is Auyoung’s most significant achievement and scholars interested in cognitive methods would definitely benefit from reading it. Realistic narratives certainly offer fertile ground for the discussions Auyoung engages in, but it would be interesting to see how these methods function in the study of other genres as well.

Alkisti Kallinikou, University of Edinburgh

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