Bad Fiction is a terribly smart book. It’s one of a plethora of terribly smart books that are popping up from the many terribly smart creative writing programmes funding new roofs on universities across Ireland and the UK. Even if Bad Fiction’s subject matter didn’t dwell directly (and über meta-consciously, hence the title) on the toxicity of said writing programmes, there would still be no mistaking it as anything other than the product of such a course.
This is because Bad Fiction is, for want of better phrasing, a bit too well-written. Which means that there’s virtually nothing to be thought or said about it: nothing about the structure, the sentences, nor the perfectly placed little bodily details that remind us that we are “in the room” with the characters. It contains just the right amount of background information to tantalise without weighing the story down, and the various, interconnected plotlines tie perfectly into a neat little bow at the end. Even its knowing meta-awareness feels like a tongue-in-cheek joke that AI might make.
Reading it, I dreamed ruefully of run-on sentences, of poor punctuation and a misused word or two. But, as in others like it, there are no snags, no stylistic idiosyncrasies. There was nothing I could gnaw on, be startled by, nor disagree with. I came away from it feeling like I had read a perfectly good book.
Which, I suppose, is what most people are looking for. The era of glorious imperfection, of challenging styles and ideas, of “art” as something to be aimed for within saleable, popular literature, appears to be dying (if it ever existed). A trend precipitated, I dare pompously venture, by the homogenising influence of these dastardly writing programmes.
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Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Bad Fiction. As will you, as will the young writer to whom you give it as a gift. No, true, I underlined nothing, took note of nothing. But I can’t for a second say I didn’t enjoy it. The characters were relatable, the plot pacey, the story (of a female predator at the head of a prestigious writing course), sufficiently engrossing. If anything, I came away thinking that writers such as Ley are far superior to many writers I know and love. Technically superior, that is.
