Minnesota Their enormous capacity to put us in another person's life is what gives novels their power.
Novels are a collision between the reader's world and the fictional world created by the author.
When the author is skillful enough, spending a few hours in this fictional world expands us, enlightens us, changes us, and we call the novel art. From a technical standpoint, Bradley is brilliant. The novel is first-person, the only real choice when writing a character like Washington, who delivers his story like the most engaging college lecture you can imagine. Bradley's prose, coming out of Washington's voice, is rich, crisp and sensory, flowing seamlessly through flashbacks, historical narratives, introspection and action. But the key adjective is rich.