Who Might Like My Novel?

It's inevitable for a novelist, sooner or later, to ponder the identity--or rather, the psychological makeup--of his ideal reader. Or put another way, what sort of a person might like his novel. Here, then, is my stab at this question.

If you like literary fiction, or that which presumes itself to be literary fiction. If you are undaunted by longish novels and have a yen for words and language used in creative ways to tell a story. If you like stories which aim to be realistic and are about ordinary people living ordinary lives very much like your own but deep down (or not so deep down) resent the suggestion that your life is ordinary. If you like stories that explore love and death and family and work and sex and art and music and literature. If you like watching a character develop over time and seeing how all the external influences and other people the character cares about most act upon him and change him. If you like to witness from afar how characters deal with crises such as death and disease and domestic disturbances and turmoil. If you like stories that explore the nature of love, both familial and romantic and that between friends. If you are interested in a novel that explores the nature of male sexuality as embodied by an admittedly limited number of male specimens. If you like to see characters making weighty decisions and then like to watch the consequences of those decisions as they play out and the ways in which the characters cope with those consequences. If you like a novel that does not insult your intelligence by leading you along by the nose and spoon-feeding you explicit explanations of the obvious. If you are of a philosophical turn of mind and enjoy pondering the meaning of life and what it is to be human. If you like a novel that treats of universal themes and concerns in which you can discern your own life experience in a way that provokes personal insights and inspiration. If you are interested in the nature of passion, in a variety of forms, and in the inexplicable mystery of the creative impulse. If you appreciate a novel that is not afraid to be speculative, that dares to postulate events in the real world which have not happened but conceivably could, and by so postulating throw a brighter (and perhaps harsher) light upon the burdens and challenges the novel's main characters are made to confront, thereby also providing insight into why the characters respond as they do. If you are interested in any or all of the above, then you might like my novel. If you are not interested in any of the above, you will almost certainly dislike it.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Signing off from the heartland,

D.E. Sievers