BookBrowse Reviews Colored Television by Danzy Senna

In Danzy Senna's Colored Television, writing professor and author Jane reflects on the advice of Dennis Mulholland, the "literary dinosaur" in charge of her MFA program who she thought was "hokey, a hack, the way he liked to quote from John Gardner's The Art of Fiction." "The novel hinges on the inciting incident," she recalls him saying, "something to destabilize your character's life in the first thirty pages." Jane has tried to ignore this advice in her writing, but it has taken up residence in her mind and informed her teaching, somewhat against her will.

In Senna's novel, no clear "inciting incident" appears within the first thirty pages. Instead, we get a glimpse into Jane's background with her artist husband, Lenny, their financial struggles, and life with their children Ruby and Finn as they hop from one temporary home in the Los Angeles area to another. Currently, they've ...