The Unfinished Book

The book is not bad. I want to be clear about that. It is, by any reasonable measure, a good book — the writing is precise, the structure is interesting, the subject is one I care about. I have recommended it to two people without having finished it, which is either dishonest or optimistic depending on how you look at it.

Both of them finished it. One of them has asked me several times what I thought of the ending. I have been vague.

The first time I started it was on a train. I read forty pages and fell asleep somewhere after a tunnel and woke up having lost my place and my momentum simultaneously. I put it away and finished something else instead.

The second time was at the beginning of winter. I got to page fifty-eight, which is further than I had been, and then we had people to stay and the rhythm broke and I put it down and it stayed down until spring.

The third and fourth times blur together. I know I reached page sixty on one of them because I remember a particular paragraph — something about light on water, which I found very good — and I have not found that paragraph again since.

Soren has not read it. He has watched me not finish it with what I can only describe as respectful neutrality. He occasionally asks how it's going. I tell him I'm making progress. This is not entirely false.

I have a theory, which is that some books resist being read continuously because they are not built for it. They need to be approached sideways — picked up, put down, returned to after enough time has passed that you've forgotten your expectations and are willing to start fresh.

I am on my fifth approach. I am on page forty-one.

I think this time might be different.