What IS Literary Fiction? What makes a book ‘Literary Fiction?’ The fiction category has two limbs-each of which serves a different purpose. Genre fiction, according to Steven Petite, provides a path of entertainment and escapism. I confess that I usually read genre fiction (historical inspirational, especially). I prefer reading books to watching television shows or movies. Mysteries, thrillers, suspense, Westerns, romance, science-fiction, and horror (I probably missed a few) make up the genre fiction limb. Petite claims that the purpose…