What’s the best book
you never finished?
I think it’s something that happens to almost every serious reader a couple times in their life–an encounter with a book that you can tell is objectively excellent, but which hits a nerve in a way that you simply cannot keep reading it.
For me it happened with John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany. For those who haven’t read the book it isn’t a spoiler to say that the narrator’s mom dies–since he tells us as much right from the very beginning. The problem for me was that he then proceeded to do such a good job rhapsodizing about her that I fell in love with her in a way I never had before with a literary character, so by the time the inevitable finally came, I had no choice but to quit. The character I loved was gone and she wasn’t coming back. I hear the rest of the book is great, but I’ll never know.
How about you? Is there a book that you know is really good, but which still managed to drive you away from getting to the end?