And his red-haired Cousin Meg has moved into the rectory, uninvited. As you can see, Mitford's rector and lifelong bachelor, Father Tim, is in need of divine intervention. In the hands of a skilled author, a novel can keep you up into the early hours of the morning. Like a dictionary, a novel is a book of words. But its words have a purpose and a goal.
Life can be like a dictionary.
Each event, each phase of life, standing on its own. That may have its interest, but most of us want life to be more than just a collection of random experiences. Life can be like a novel. That's when our lives seem to have a plot, to be moving toward a goal that's larger than ourselves. That's when we understand how our stories fit into the grand scheme of life as we know it.