A chapter isn’t a short story and needn’t be able to stand alone, nor is it just a random break that signifies that the novelist is tired of this particular storyline and would like to go on to something else. Chapters are like the foot pedals on a piano; they give you another level of control. Short chapters can speed the book along, while long chapters can deepen intensity. Tiny chapters—a lone paragraph or a single sentence—can be irritatingly cute. I like a chapter that both has a certain degree of autonomy and at the same time pushes the reader forward, so that someone who is reading in bed and has vowed to turn off the light at the chapter’s end will instead sit up straighter and keep turning the pages. (If you want to study the master of the well-constructed chapter—and plot and flat-out gorgeous writing—read Raymond Chandler. The Long Goodbye is my favorite.)

ANN PATCHETT