What makes us abandon a novel?
“Me first, so I don’t ask what I don’t give: I started and abandoned Steppenwolf about five times. Five. Until one day I finished it, and I don’t even know what changed: the book, me, or the moment. Since then I distrust my own desertions.”
First, timing
The same book can bore us at one stage of life and fascinate us years later. The book didn’t change: we did. Fernando put it well: what’s written is there, it doesn’t change; we’re the ones who change. And Paulo turned the question around: sometimes it’s the book that chooses you.
Then, the book itself
Stories that don’t move. Plots that circle. Too much description. Characters you can’t bond with. When curiosity about what comes next disappears, many stop reading.
Reading takes energy
Fatigue, sadness, lack of focus. There are times we simply don’t have the head for the book we chose. And practical reasons: awkward editions, translations that don’t work, the microscopic type of certain paperbacks.
No one is alone
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Hopscotch, Ulysses, Les Misérables, 1984. The great abandoned ones all sat half-read on a nightstand once. And almost never by a solemn decision: the book stays on the table one night, and life moves on.
As a writer, I take away something I like: my job is to write the best book I can. Then I have to accept what I no longer control: the meeting between that book and each reader. And maybe an abandoned novel isn’t always a lost one. Sometimes it simply arrived too early.