On Unfinished Books

When is it alright to give up on a book?

Not never; clearly reading time is a limited and precious resource and should not be wasted on un-rewarding books when there are so many others out there waiting to be enjoyed.

Neither, though, immediately the reading gets a little difficult, drops in pace, or starts to get a bit silly.

Somewhere between these two we each have to draw our own line in the sand. For me it is unusual to abandon a book part way through, I think for the following reasons:

1.    I choose books quite carefully – to get onto the ever growing ‘to read’ pile it has to pass more than a cursory glance; and then to get picked from that pile for reading it will face stiff competition. To abandon it would then call my initial judgement into question, making me naturally reluctant.

2.    Having invested a few hours to get well into the book it seems a bit of a waste to give it up – but this has to be weighed up against the potential greater waste of time in continuing.

3.    It may always get better or produce a late revelation that makes sense of it all or justifies the early indifference.

4.    As I tend to have 3 or 4 books on the go at once I can press on with one dubious volume while getting light relief from the others, so avoiding feeling deprived by the offending tome.

So few of my reads have been discarded, shelved or disposed of unfinished – just half a dozen come to mind – but they do include some well-regarded books that just did not do it for me, including:

§  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne – due to interminably turgid descriptions of underwater inactivity this sank without trace in the Sea of Nonentity.

§  The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers – I anticipated a thrilling period spy story and found instead a manual of yachting terms, techniques and torpidity that became becalmed somewhere off the Coast of Nowhere.

§  Moby Dick by Herman Melville – I am embarrassed by this one and have vowed to return, older wiser and with more time, to search for the mythical great white whale of universal truth that lies reputedly somewhere within its pages.

The nautical theme of these three may seem significant but I happily sailed through The Kon-Tiki Expedition, The Life of Pi, and A World of My Own (Robin Knox-Johnston’s account of his single handed circumnavigation) without getting sea-sick of them.

§  Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak – I have tried twice to read this but have twice hit the buffers like a train in a Siberian snowdrift; I blame the translation.

§  Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor – I found the author’s laconic radio broadcasts amusing but the book was too slow paced and more woeful than beguiling.

And now I need to transfer Honore de Balzac’s ‘Cousin Betty’ from ‘currently reading’ into the retired unfinished select few. I quite enjoyed his ‘Pere Goriot’ many years ago but I’m finding this volume of his ‘Comedie Humaine’ a bit of a chore. The satire is aimed at French politics and society of a period of which I am clearly ignorant, and the prose is very clunky – possibly a questionable translation in this free down-loaded ‘public access’ edition.

So my advice on unfinished books is: choose your reads with care, but don’t be afraid to experiment; persevere at least 50 to 100 pages to acclimatise yourself the style and pace; before baling out give it a week off and then read another chapter; if you then decide it’s not for you take it to the charity shop – it may be for somebody else - and move on with no regrets.

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy H, who is just 31, is looking back and examining the events of her early life, seeking clues and explanations to help her come to terms with an imminent change to her circumstances.

She tells of her ‘schooldays’ at the exclusive Hailsham, closeted with others of her kind; their graduation to an isolated farmhouse; and transition to designated ’careers’. But they are narrated as if we are already in the know, so it is only gradually we come to realise there is a disturbing background to this coming of age tale. That their lives and shadowy existence are part of an otherwise unchanged modern day Britain adds to the atmosphere of conspiracy and foreboding.

Through the lives of Kathy and her friends, Ruth and Tommy, we run the gamut of boarding school strife and adolescent angst. Despite their unusual upbringing, humanity is all too apparent in their actions and feelings, for what good it may do them. Curiously we see no teenage rebellion against their pre-ordained destiny.

Ishiguro knows how to portray relationships from fragments of things said or left unsaid and from small actions done or omitted, familiar from his “Remains of the Day”. In this work the style is breathy and conversational, but this creates an authentic voice and delivery for Kathy who, after all, is a ‘carer’ not a writer.

As the book rolls unevenly on the tension mounts and the need to know the whole ghastly truth is irresistible; can it possibly end well for Kathy H and those she has to care for?

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

The novel opens with the narrator crashing his car which bursts into flames with horrific results, graphically described at a level of clinical detail that indicates both extensive research and morbid fascination. This continues in the description of the treatment and healing process of burn victims which sounds only marginally less painful than the original trauma but lasts a lot longer. Not for the overly squeamish.

In recovery the burn victim, curiously un-named throughout, reflects on his previous playboy life; contemplates the future as a hideous freak; and with cold-heart and cool head plans an elaborate and fool-proof suicide.

But while in hospital he is visited by the strange psychiatric patient Marianne Engel who insists they have history – ancient history as according to her they first met in 14^th Century Germany. Then, as a nun, she nursed him back from a previous burning before quitting her order to go on the run with him to avoid him having to return to his mercenary troop. Having, in her apparently unsound mind, saved him once, she is determined to look after him in his current incarnation (or incineration).

Their developing current and former relationships, separated by 700 years, are related in parallel strands, the then by her and the now by him. The narrative is punctuated with four fables told by Marianne, each on the theme of love and sacrifice (which does not bode well); we also have a hallucinatory descent into hell as our burn victim goes cold turkey on his more-than-painkilling morphine habit.

It’s compulsive reading, even where extraneous detail bordering on the obsessive is included. The twin narration works well, with hers in particular breaking off at cliff-hanging moments that create tension and drama. Gradually the tone of the book shifts from horrific, through cathartic to tender, culminating in a moving, even poignant, ending. Around the tipping point it maybe loses a bit of momentum, but a little perseverance brings its due reward.

On and Off the Field by Ed Smith

Read as part of the sport reading journey

This is Ed Smith’s personal account of the 2003 cricket season. Written in diary form it gives an insight into the life of a ‘county pro’ in English cricket; in his case of a batsman at a crucial juncture in his career. At age 26, having been a bit of a prodigy for Cambridge University, he is established in the Kent team and in contention for a place in the Test Matches against the touring South Africans.

His diary entries concern his preparation, performance and post-match feelings;  sometimes brief and pithy, sometimes deeply reflective and technical, as he searches for the frame of mind and physical adjustments that will produce the sportsman’s holy grail of “form”.

Smith got a double first at Cambridge and is now part of the revered Test Match Special commentary team so he writes both well and accessibly. It’s not thrill a minute, but cricket rarely is, and the periods of introspection outnumber the occasional but real emotional highs. But it is an honest book that concentrates on the sport without distractions of celebrity tittle tattle that can mar some sporting memoirs.

I like cricket with its elemental one-on-one battle between bowler and batsman. Where some people see dull, I see attritional; for me the meaningless draw can contain a myriad of meaningful performances. More than any other sport, the taking part in the game is as important as the result. This may be because luck plays such a big part – the toss to decide who bats first, the changing weather, the variable bounce in the wicket, the edged four, and the freakish run-out can all decide a match as much as the skill of the players; so much importance is given to how you deal with what fate hands you.

 

Notably Smith’s latest book “Luck” deals with this phenomenon in life as well as sport.

I haven’t read that one but I certainly recommend this one for cricket fans or anyone interested in sporting performance generally.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs

As the novel opens Jacob Portman is just a rich American kid with an eccentric Grandpa, Abraham, who backs up wild tales of his youth with a few weird looking photographs. These date from the Second World War when, as the only survivor of his Jewish family in Poland, he was placed at Miss Peregrine’s orphanage on a remote island off the coast of Wales.

Abraham is suffering from paranoia, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, and one day Jacob finds his Grandpa dying from horrific wounds. His parting gifts to his grandson are some enigmatic last words, an old letter from Miss Peregrine, and the box of photos.

Suffering post-traumatic hallucinations and nightmares Jacob gets a shrink who concludes Jacob is obsessed with his Grandpa’s mysterious past and would benefit from a trip to Wales to confront reality.

So the action switches to the Island of Cairnholm where Jacob discovers the derelict, bombed out orphanage, yet more photos, and crucially a time portal that allows him to step back into September 1940 when the establishment was in full swing and occupied by real life children with peculiar talents.

But they are under threat from both the Luftwaffe bombing raids and their more eternal enemies – the ‘hollowgasts’ -  and Jacob’s own undiscovered talent is needed to help defend the Home for Peculiar Children.

The first person narrative takes the story along briskly, and though possibly aimed at the older teen fiction market, the use of vintage photographs throughout makes it enough of a curiosity to interest adults as well. The downside of the photographs is an occasional contrived reference but this does not detract from the story or the overall appeal of the book.