Who Else Writes Like … ?: A Readers' Guide to Fiction Authors (6th ed.)

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2009), "Who Else Writes Like … ?: A Readers' Guide to Fiction Authors (6th ed.)", Library Review, Vol. 58 No. 9, pp. 695-696. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530910998008

If you liked that, you will like this: such guides as this work on that principle – “designed to help library users who have read all the books by their favourite authors and are seeking new names to try”. The Who Else Writes Like … guide began life in 1993 and has remained in print through its numerous editions ever since, not only because it is useful for librarians and bookshops but also because keen fiction readers find it useful too. Authors have been chosen based on public lending right lists of most‐borrowed items in libraries. The team of compilers under experienced public librarians Roy and Jeanne Huse now includes librarians from Australia as well as the UK, widening its range.

At least three new features come along in the sixth edition: an index of pseudonyms, information (just a little!) about authors who write for both adults and children, and information about crossover books (junior to adult fiction). Other listings exist of course, including the Bloomsbury guides (reading groups, good reading, crime fiction, world fiction), the Rough guides (classic novels, crime fiction), Sequels (13th Edition 2004 from CILIP), and a Who Next? guide on children's authors from LISU itself (3rd Edition 2007). Reference works on authors and characters, studies of genres and themes, and websites also abound. For all that, the Who Else Writes Like … guide has held its own.

We all know that recommending an author presumes that the author always writes the same type of books, and that recommending further authors readers might enjoy underplays important differences they might have. It's likely that someone who enjoys Hemingway will enjoy Mailer and Steinbeck, for instance, but not necessarily Conrad or Scott Fitzgerald. SF buffs would dispute connecting Robert Heinlein with Asimov or Ray Bradbury, Verne or Wyndham, arguing that the differences are greater than the similarities. On the other hand, readers of Candace Robb and Alyse Clare really are likely to enjoy Susanna Gregory, readers of Ian Rankin the books of Alex Gray and Frederic Lindsay, readers of Dean Koontz the stories of James Herbert, Richard Matheson and Richard Laymon, and readers of J K Rowling the stories of Eoin Colfer.

Inside the general alphabetical listing of authors here we are also given genre (chick lit, crime, horror and humour, paranormal and saga, lad lit and sea and war). These genres have separate listings too, along with further information on characters and series (such things as Brother Cadfael, Alex Delaware, Inspector Ghote, Hercule Poirot and Star Trek series). The overall selection is realistic and catholic, extending from Arturo Perez‐Reverte (linked with Camilleri, Eco, and Iain Pears), Allan Massie (linked with Robert Nye and David Wishart), and Peter Hoeg (linked with Garrder, Kaminskey, Mankell, Proulx and Murakami).

Such linkages beg as many questions as they present imaginative connections: the Massie batch, for instance, connects this versatile Scottish writer with Michael Dobbs and Robert Graves, Rosemary Rowe, and Bernard McLaverty, something that both reveals the diversity of Massie's own writing and tests the plausibility of the connections themselves. Clearly what is assumed throughout is that users may already know a lot about such fiction and be prepared to explore the shelves – in libraries, bookshops, Amazon and the rest – to pin down specific titles. It's invidious to fault such lists because they don't – and ultimately cannot – pin down actual titles, not least because any one library may not have it and because it may well be out of print.

Inevitably, there is a subjectivity about choice: I might not first think of advising a reader of Tim Severin to go on to Bernard Cornwell or Wilbur Smith, probably choosing instead Thor Heyerdahl, Sara Wheeler, Barry Lopez, and Redmond O'Hanlan. Yet connecting Lisa Scottoline with Lina Fairstein and John Lescroart makes sense, Alison Lurie with Rachel Billington and Edith Wharton too, as with Pynchon and Roth with Joseph Heller. Digging deeper, citing Remarque for Graves picks up on Graves's Goodbye to All That while citing Renault and Iggulden and Massie reminds us of Graves's books about Classical times.

As for the three new features in this edition, the pseudonyms (a field well covered in its own right) are useful (for example, Tanith is also Esther Garber), and the crossover authors (separately listed and in the main list) as plausible as any list I've seen (it includes writers like Carl Hiaasen and Irvine Welsh, Thomas Hardy and William Golding, Anne Fine and J D Salinger, no surprises). This list indicates authors who also write for children (only an incidental feature). There is also information about literary prizes and awards, from the James Tait Black, Man Booker and Pulitzer to the Theakston's Old Peculier [sic] Crime Novel of the Year (which in 2008 went to The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney).

Such guides are extras to well‐informed staff, self‐sufficient readers, and the many (but admittedly very uneven) guides to fiction that already exist. They imply and even exude assumptions of quality and selection, and guide readers onwards. We can criticise them for being mere lists, for reducing reading to authors and titles, except for the fact that the people who use them most, and best, will already be predisposed to read on for themselves. So on to Gimenez and Reich from Turow, to Indridason and Fossum from Mankell, to Mo and Tan from Ishiguro, and to Desai and Hosseini from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and V S Naipaul.

Good too for updating your reading, within genre or not, if, say, you're stuck in a rut with the fiction of Patricia Highsmith or Georgette Heyer or Jack Higgins: many new authors have come along since. This feature makes the guide a useful checklist for stock selection. Going the other way, it's also good for going back from the merely fashionably topical to fiction from a little while ago. A challenge for the compilers here would be that of weaving in suitable non‐fiction: crossovers there, some media‐driven, would make the list even more useful. The paperback is sturdily bound to withstand much handling.