It isn’t often that I start a book but not finish it. I’d much rather struggle through to the bitter end clinging to some vague hope that there will be a payoff in the end. In fact, I can only think of three books I abandoned partway through. Two I went back to and eventually finished, but the third I have tried and tried again, only to set it aside each time for something else. Three books over the course of 30-something years of rather voracious reading… not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
Imagine my surprise, then, to start this year off with not one, but two books I put down by page 100. I wasn’t even going to post on them, but I received them through the Library Thing Early Reviewer’s program, and while a review isn’t mandatory the folks over at LT ask so nicely that I hate to disappoint. The question becomes, then, is can I honestly review a book that I didn’t finish?
It happens all the time. Book reviewing is a business, after all. Critics are under deadlines and have both public and corporate expectations to meet as far as timeliness goes when it comes to new releases. Most often they will receive advanced reading copies direct from the publisher which allows them, hopefully, to publish their review on or shortly after the book’s release date.
That said, I don’t really think it’s appropriate for me, personally, to give a thumbs-up or down kind of review for a book I didn’t even get a third of the way through. Instead, I’ll touch briefly on the reasons why I put each book down. Reading is, after all, a personal experience. The act of reading itself is what I have always focused my reviews on, and that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the “literary quality” of the book being read. Moby Dick may well be one of the greatest books ever written, after all, but I’d never know it. I’ve put that sucker down three times.
So, without further babblage, here are the two books that didn’t last more than a hundred pages:
Title: Vilnius Poker
Author: Ricardas Gavelis
Translator: Elizabeth Novickas
Publisher: Open Letter Books
Year Published: 2009 (originally published in Lituanian as Vilniaus pokeris by Vaga in 1989)
Pages: 485
First Sentence: A narrow crack between two high-rises, a break in a wall encrusted with blind windows: a strange opening to another world; on the other side children and dogs scamper about, while on this side – only an empty street and tufts of dust chased by the wind.
To be, for once, succinct, I was not at all ready for this book. Vilnius Poker is a deep, difficult read that I will absolutely return to. For whatever reason, however, I couldn’t muster the focus the writing demands of the reader. Realizing this, I set it aside and will try again at some point down the road.
That said, even though I struggled with it, I knew I was reading, or trying to read, something very special. Gavelis’ writing is, in a word, stunning. It is also packed with big, huge, tremendous ideas as the main character, Vytautus Vargalis, struggles to maintain what little grasp of reality he has left after being imprisoned and tortured in a Soviet prison camp.
In some ways I shared that struggle, as I found myself, more often than not, confused as to what was happening to Vytuatus. I never felt as though I had a firm stance on where the story started out, what the baseline was, and that left me frustrated and continually flipping pages backwards and rereading in an effort to clear things up for myself. I do not think, however, that this is indicative of a flaw in the writing itself. It is a result of the perspective of Vytautus and, I think, extremely important to the overall tone of even the short bit I struggled through.
Vilnius Poker is not for the casual reader or the faint of heart, and, now that I better understand that, I’ll approach it much differently when I next pick it up and start at page 1.
Title: Brideshead Revisited
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Publisher: Knopf (Everyman’s Library)
Year Published: 1993 (originally published 1945 by Chapman & Hall)
Pages: 315
First Sentence: When I reached ‘C’ company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.
I stopped reading because I was bored. That sums it up, really. The book started out strong with a prologue that set up the plot (or what I thought was the plot) extremely well. It was both active and introspective and presented a situation that was rich with both internal and external conflict for the first-person pov protagonist. But then the prologue ended, and with it all the tension it built up, and chapter one takes the reader back in time.
I assume that the final chapter(s) return to the present-day that the prologue established, but I didn’t make it far enough to find out. I found the story plodding and slow, with far too much focus on “realistic” conversation that seemed endless and ultimately pointless. I cared nothing for any of the characters, therefore I cared nothing for what they were talking (and talking, and talking, and talking) about.
Brideshead Revisited is shelved and there it will stay until, one day, when I once again run out of shelf space, I donate it to the local library.
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