Aptly named US author Francine Prose is an advocate of close reading. In this guide for writers, students and enthusiastic readers, she analyses her favourite novels under chapter headings like ‘Words’, ‘Sentences’ and ‘Dialogue’. At the outset, Prose deals with the thorny question of whether writing can be taught, riotously imagining Kafka, ‘enduring the seminar in which his classmates inform him that, frankly, they just don’t believe the part about the guy waking up one morning to find he’s a giant bug’. So maybe it can’t exactly be taught, but there’s a lot to be gleaned from reading, and Prose is a genial guide – an enthusiast. Passionate about books, she adores reading, and she is a keen, anecdotal teacher. She has favourites; ‘Books to Be Read Immediately’ features 117 novels – five Tolstoys, three Flannery O’Connors, etcetera. Any booklist is bound to be controversial and some of her choices are beguiling: Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye doesn’t feature, but Franny and Zooey does. There’s a John Le Carré, a Raymond Chandler, and – agreeably up-to-date – two Edward St. Aubyns. Book buffs believe you can find models for how to live through reading; Prose is superlative company.

Louise Swinn is the Editorial Director of Sleepers Publishing and a lecturer in Creative Writing.