The Novel As Treacle

Hello there, Hope you're feeling well today.

As a lifelong reader I always feel obligated to read a book from start to finish. Never felt the urge to skip bits here and there. It's a feeling I've only had with books. With TV I'm been happy to change channel/fast forward where applicable and as a father I've learnt that cinema seats are surprisingly comfortable places for an afternoon nap

(Mind you that doesn't work if you're in the dating stage of your life. I remember a date where the choice of film was between So I Married An Axe Murderer and the one my date wanted The Man With Half A Face starring Mel Gibson. Needless to say she won. However it was the sort of film so monumentally dull that you looked at the time expecting it to end only to find that only half an hour had passed. The movie was so bad that at the end she apologised. Needless to say we didn't become an item).

But books are different. Always to me.

The trouble with this is that when reading a book that you don't like does not become a pleasure but a chore. Though with most the realisation does not come immediately it just creeps up on you. Slowly,insidiously like ageing.

You may have noticed that it has taken me a long while to finish The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. It's of course partly because I've four books on the go but also, as I think you've guessed by now because I was not a fan.

Now before I go on there are two things that I need to say. Firstly there is a major character in the book who has, for want of a better phrase, a medical condition (there is another minor character later on with the same condition), Nothing I'm going to say should imply mockery of this. Indeed this characterisation was probably the best thing about the book. Pity I can't say the same about the rest of them.

Secondly (as hinted above) I'm being deliberately vague about the plot as to not spoil it for the future reader. I am, after all conscious that my opinion is probably a minority one and future readers should make up their own minds.

As I mentioned when I started this book I thought that having read and liked books by writers such as Francoise Sagan and Edna O'Brien emotional books were no longer beyond me. Well was wrong about that. For this was emotional as in Made For TV emotional. If this novel had a soundtrack it would have extra violins. If this novel had a free gift it would have the strings it intended to pluck your heart with.

This book was leaden with weight of the dramas it slowly (and I mean slowly) placed upon the reader. It was about a quarter of the way through that I felt that I was wandering in the syrupy stuff.

From early on then for me the unbelievable situations were combined with the unbelievable characters (the exception noted above) and when a writer is unable to suspend the reader's belief in what they are reading then the magic of a book is lost.

So a new book needs to be picked. This was the one I chose.

A4 - Digging Up The Past - Sir Leonard Woolley

This is a vintage Pelican paperback which advertises itself as "An Introduction To Archaeology". Whether it will inspire me to get my hands dirty whilst looking for a pot a Roman invader lived in remains to be seen.

Until the next time.