Faulks on Fiction

As a rule, I tend to avoid companion books to TV series. Too often they're dumbed down versions of the author's other work.
Or are too reliant on your having seen the original show thus giving a feeling of someone blathering on about a great party you missed.
This however is a solid primer.
Sebastian Faulks, author of Charlotte Gray and Birdsong amongst others, groups together characters from British novels and uses them to explore not only the novel and their function in it but, sometimes, the genre.

Now I'm nowhere near as widely read as Faulks so I don't know how contentious some of his essays are. Whilst I found Chanu Ahmed's character in Brick Lane so off-putting that I gave up on the book, I can see why Faulks files him under the Snob category.  Certainly Faulks's pieces on Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Heathcliff were spot-on.
And I've since started reading Vanity Fair on the strength of this.
He doesn't out-right spoil but gives you enough of a taster for you to want to read the novel.

Also, in the James Bond chapter, there's a glimpse into his writing process as he describes how he wrote his Bond novel Devil May Care. Admittedly I haven't read that novel but his analysis of Bond is interesting.
The Sherlock Holmes section is also a somewhat affectionate look into the difficulties of writing genre fiction. (And there's an observation about Watson that I won't spoil here, but it is absolutely hilarious).

Once or twice, I feel that I'm not part of Faulks's target audience. He compares one character to an Archers character (suggesting to me we're aiming for middle-aged middle class readers here). However these are only fleeting.
All told, it's thought-provoking and made me want to explore (some of) the books covered that I hadn't read.
These can only be good things.