Have you ever experienced a friendship that you cherish deeply, but sometimes drains your energy to the point that you have to take a step back from it?
That's basically my relationship with this book now. I've wanted to read it over Christmas break; specifically bought it for it. I wanted to crawl up in a cosy blanket and fully immerse in it. Somehow, that has not been possible. It's almost March now... And I still feel like I've barely gotten through the beginning.
-Spoilers from here on- I truly want to read this book. I want to see where the story goes and what's going to happen to Theo, but the writing style is just something I can't really get through. To be honest, and don't come for me here, I had the same feeling with Tartt's Secret History. I desperately want to love the story, but I can't emerge myself in it because Tartt uses a lot of words and scenes to describe minuscule actions. There isn't happening much, at this point. I'm still at the part where he's with Boris, Boris just found his girlfriend, actually, and I suspect that he's going to abandon Theo. Theo is realising that he's quite bothered by being replaced. And I can see that the long descriptive scenes before this realisation did build up to that, but it just doesn't work well for me.
My focus moves away from the story and grasps onto everything else that might go a bit quicker and perhaps that's just entirely my own fault and not necessarily the writing style. But I'm around 250-300 pages in and we haven't even seen the painting again, and at this point in the story, I am honestly wondering where it's moving to. Maybe, the purpose is to be in this dark almost rock bottom point of hopelessness for Theo; maybe he will grow and move forward from this point on, and maybe I should just be a bit more patient and enjoy the ride. But I do recognize my own tendency to continue reading a book that I actually don't like just for the purpose of finishing it. Once that happens, I don't really enjoy reading it anymore, it takes more energy than it gives me. Have you read The Goldfinch already? What's your opinion about it? Have you had a similar experience in reading through a book that's giving you a hard time? Do you toss it or do you keep on reading?
I've seen that there's also a movie adaptation, and I am quite curious about it, but I've set myself the rule that I could only watch it after I've finished it. Have you seen it yet? What did you think of it?
Let me know, I'd love to talk.
---- Update ----
July - After struggling for months to get through one chapter, I have decided to put this one to the side for now. I might pick it up again later but for now, I've moved on to other books.
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