Appeal Factors

Three book reviews and three ways of working with the appeal factors: this is pretty straightforward, I will use a different method for each book review.

In the name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and the Continuum Method

The first method is the continuum in which each reader responds differently to each of the eight appeal factors (pacing, characterization, story line, language, setting, detail, tone and learning/experiencing). It goes from total indifference to great influence on the reading experience.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I like to learn when I read. And In the Name of the Rose is a perfect example of historical fiction that teaches you a lot of facts and details about the period and the setting, here 14^th century Northern Italy. In that regard, the learning/experiencing of this novel is very close to a non-fiction book. The details are omnipresent. Not only the medieval way of life and mentality, but also about the story. The storyline concerns a series of mysterious murders in a Benedictine monastery. As a detective thriller, In the Name of the Rose has a fast pace and is a page turner, despite the theological arguments and the erudite language of certain passages. The tone is rather naive and inquisitive because the narrator is a young novice monk, new to the area and the priesthood, as most readers themselves are. Most of the characters are ambiguous, and their motives are hidden from the readers. Until the end, when the masks and lies are unveiled by the main protagonist/detective to all, including the readers.

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry and Saricks Method

The Saricks Method is based on genres and identifies four of them: Adrenaline (Thrillers, Adventures, Suspense, Romantic Suspense), Intellect (Science-Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mysteries, Psychological Suspense), Emotion (Romance, Horror, Gentle Reads, Chick Lit, Women’s Lives) and Landscape (Westerns, Fantasy, Historical).

Under the Volcano is a good example of a literacy fiction. Lowry is often describes as a writer’s writer. The book is even on the list of the best 100 novels English language of the 20^th century by the Modern Library. The story takes place in a single day, the Day of the Dead in a small Mexican town called Quauhnachuac. The main character is an alcoholic consul from the UK looking for his next drink. During that day, the reader learns about lost love and ambition, difficult relationships and hiding truths, boredom and violence, and more literary themes.

According to the Saricks Method, readers who like Under the Volcano will also like Science-Fiction, Mysteries and Psychological Suspense. All those genres focus on language and characters. So readers who value those two appeal factors will like Under the Volcano. Lowry uses beautiful and meaningful language, each of his words was cautiously decided and contains many level of meanings and significances. So far for the characters, their inner world is as rich as complex. At times it seems the characters discover their deep motivations and desires at the same time as the reader.

Maus by Art Spiegelman and the Doorway Method

Personally, I feel the doorway method is the easier way to work with appeal factors. Like Neal Wyatt wrote, most readers already use the four doorways (story, setting, character and language) to describe books and movies. However, Neal also wrote that the two most influential appeal factors on the readers are the pacing and the tone. So I will use them as well.

Maus was published by in Art Spiegelman between 1980 and 1991 in Raw, a small carton magazine. It is a true story about the author’s Jewish family during WWII. In a way, it is a historical fiction written as a graphic novel, one of the first graphic novels to reach the general public. As a holocaust fiction, it can be compared to Night by Elie Wiesel or If this is a man by Primo Levi. The setting is Europe, mainly Poland, under Nazi occupation and how the civil population, Jewish and not, tries to survive. The tone is dark as the subject, but still lighter than Wiesel or Levi by the utilization of drawings and the illustrations of daily situations. Also the characters are portrayed as animals rather than human. This allegory creates a aloofness between the reader and the story, which made the tone of the book almost comical. Thus, the Jewish people are represented as mice, the German people as cats, the French people as frogs, the Polish people as pigs, etc. As a graphic novel, the pace is determined by the reader. One can read the dialogue very fast without paying too much attention to the drawings, while the other can examines each square for each detail. Finally, the language is very much alive, being mostly dialogue, but visual as well.