by Jincy Willett.

St. Martin’s. 326 pages. $24.95.

BY MANDY TWADDELL
Special to the Journal

Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. This one names all the characters to be found inside. There’s the doctor, the jock, the slacker, the classy woman, the fat girl, the smart one, the kiss up, the pretty girl, the retired teacher, the class clown, the cool guy, the know it all, and the lawyer. One of them is a killer. And it isn’t the teacher, Amy Gallup, who, true to character, gives the reader actual lessons in creative writing.*

Jincy Willett, who once taught writing in Brown University’s extension division, now has two novels that can be paired. I began with this one, and liked it enough to read her first, audaciously titled Winner of the National Book Award (St. Martin’s, 2003), in which she zeroes in on the eccentricities of Rhode Island’s quirky inhabitants. It got rave reviews.

Willett’s zany humor is blended with intelligence and empathy for people worth knowing, at least in a book. She is never boring, and has a way of bonding the reader to herself, much as the characters in her writing class bond with one another.

This is an author who approaches the reader from many angles. Apart from the mystery, there is flash fiction, written by members of the class. Each entry, to be critiqued by fellow students, reflects the personality of its author. Hence there are stories within stories, with variant styles and intent. The reader becomes the teacher, analyzing the work, while figuring out who among them is a psychopath.

Willett has a consistent gripe that she weaves into her narratives. She can’t abide the publishing world and the writing profession it has spawned. Considering a student, Amy muses: “No doubt Dot had been told more than once that her work was publishable. . . . There was a local industry devoted to Dots: weekend writing conferences, during which the Dots could pay extra to have a real-live literary agent actually read one of their paragraphs; expensive week long retreats . . . where the Dots could locate their inner voices . . . and fiction writing contests which the Dots could enter for a hefty fee. . . .”

Reviewers are not spared her rueful sting. Yet Willett is part of the world she artfully skewers, and I wound up attached to the feisty curmudgeon, just as she planned.

* NOVEL HYBRIDS: (to stir creative juices) Hey, Jude the Obscure, The Picture of Dorian Grey’s Anatomy, Gone With The Windows for Dummies. I tried these. They’re harder then they look. THE WRITING CLASS,

jimandy111@cox.net