I've just finished reading Consciousness and the Novel by David Lodge.
The book is a series of essays: the longest shares its title with the book, and reviews some of science's attempt to understand consciousness. In particular it examines the inability of science to probe that which is subjective. It looks at qualia (Wiki defines these as "qualities or sensations, like redness or pain, as considered independently of their effects on behaviour and from whatever physical circumstances give rise to them. In more philosophical terms, qualia are properties of sensory experiences) and suggests that the novel can help here. (I can't say that I'm convinced - science is science; subjectivity is subjectivity.) The effect on consciousness on the novel is also examined: how the thoughts of the characters are conveyed, whether by their action, by their conversations or by "reading" their minds - all useful when considering how to choose and write POVs. All in all, this essay was both an interesting read and educational.
The rest of the book contains shorter essays, looking at how writers react to their own experiences or how others see their work (and, in particular, how they use deal with revealing how their characters think. Authors looked at include Dickens; E. M. Forster; Waugh; Kingsley and Martin Amis; Henry James (looked at in terms of how easy it isn't to adapt his books for film); Updike; Roth; and Lodge himself (focusing on Therapy and Thinks).
As someone who was last "involved" with literary criticism for an O Level in the '70s, I found this book to be a helpful guide to the more literary end of the trade.
