Book review: The lives of the novel: a history by Thomas G. Pavel

"The Lives of the Novel: A History." Thomas G. Pavel. Princeton University Press. September 2013. --- This book is a history of the novel from ancient Greece to the vibrant world of contemporary fiction. Thomas Pavel argues that the driving force behind the novel’s evolution has been a rivalry between stories that idealize human behavior and those that ridicule and condemn it. Impelled by this conflict, the novel moved from depicting strong souls to sensitive hearts and, finally, to enigmatic psyches. Pavel makes his case by analyzing more than a hundred novels from Europe, North and South America, Asia, and beyond. Sophie Franklin writes that this text presents a cohesive lineage that moves effortlessly from one point to another.