Captain Corelli’s Kazoo
A classic, says Mark Twain, is a book people praise but don’t read.
War and Peace, say. Or Ulysses. Both tomes appear on a list of Most Unfinished Novels, a survey result from March last year. As do a few surprises.
In order of abandonment, according to feedback from 4000 failed British readers, the Least Concluded read:
1 Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
2 Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
3 Ulysses, James Joyce
4 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
5 Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
6 The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
7 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
8 War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy
9 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
10 Crime & Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
To be honest, I’ve completed two – namely (3) and (10), and lost the battle with Tolstoy. And since the library confessional is open for biz, I’m growing more prone to hoicking books prematurely, including the Raw Shark Text and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union most recently. Both could be dubbed clever-clever and sometimes all I’m craving is a good tale.
Are we ditching books with greater abandon? Is this a list liable to blossom, the time-poorer we become, the shorter-fused, the less forgiving?
Other lapsed scalps of my past are The Master and the Margarita (twice) by Mikhail Bulgakov, Possession (more like dispossession) and For The Term of His Natural Life (which is what if felt like.)
Undaunted, I’m currently one-fifth into A Fraction of the Whole, the 700-page whopper by Steve Toltz. Still the honeymoon phase really, I’m happy to report that the book and I remain very close. We won’t be splitting up just yet.
A thanks to Simon M, by the way, for letting me know about this jilted list. I’m led to believe the late-great David Foster Wallace made Infinite Jest so damn inifinite (at some 1000+ pages) as one way to highlight our diminishing patience as consumers - and the guy was on the $ IMHO.
So what novel(s) saw you break the deal before consummation?