A Lack of Space

Brains, reading, and what gets in the way.

I started reading a new book recently, and within a few pages my brain said “STOP THIS RIGHT NOW.” and I ended it.

The first three pages were scene setting. Ok, all good, that I can do. Why is this man outside in only pants and a leather jacket with a cat who hates him? Answer given. Hurrah. Is the cat fine? Yes, excellent.

The second part of the scene setting was more complicated. Aliens and/or robots have invaded, and flattened every single building, or anything with a roof even in the most loose of terms. Yes, that includes the people in them.

Ghastly. Anyhoo. There follows a hugely long diatribe delivered by a disembodied Voice. Four or five pages of rules, stipulations and directions, none of which I came to care about after the first paragraph or two. If I had to remember any of this in order to progress that wasn’t going to happen. If I had been the one left outside in pants and a leather jacket, I doubt I would have survived. This may be why I am no good at learning languages when grammar rules are involved. My capacity for anything like that is truly miniscule, I’d rather try and piece it together as I go along; picking up the relevant pieces of conversation whilst listening to the shape of the words, seeing where they fit like pieces in a word puzzle.

I might try the book again at some point but not on that day. (Edited to add: I checked with Husband who shared the book, and apparently none of that Voice section turned out to be relevant!)

I have very little patience for long, rambling sentences either. One character I was reading about last week was prone to internal monologues about what might or might not come to pass during almost every conversation she had with someone. The problem was that none of those inside monologues of wittering ever mattered to the story. I found myself speed reading past them so I could pick up the story thread again. The author could likely have taken at least five pages out of every chapter, and still had a damned fine story.

The whole storyline was absolutely brilliant, but the main character was also so annoying in her self-destructive and self absorbed attitude that I had to fight to keep going. The only reason I kept on was that I found I had a huge liking for the characters around her and, annoyingly, her fate determined theirs, so I had to stick with it.

There was an oddly pointless retelling of a bitchy podcast at the beginning of each chapter that added nothing. One sentence would be relevant to the chapter to come, but then the rest of the four pages was just dialogue and in-story advertising. Looking back, had I been the editor, there were at least three of those pages that could go. Part of me wants to read the second book because it finished on a bit of a fascinating cliff-hanger, but she hasn’t written it yet. I’m also more than a little concerned it will be more of the same.

I have found that the older I get, the less patience I have for floral and overly elaborate extended writing. If it all weaves into the plot and has relevance, but also happens to be beautiful? Then you have me. Three pages of description that could have been summed up in one page leave me cold, and wishing for a virtual red pen or a remote control so I can forward on ten seconds.

Has anyone else found themselves re-reading paragraphs and mentally inserting punctuation so that you can keep hold of the original thread of a written conversation? Willing the writer to breathe, whilst the sentence has run on and on, tangled in and around itself? The words and emotions might be gorgeous and heartfelt but then there’s a sense of the author getting lost in their own verboseness. There’s me with the mental insertion of commas again.

There is just as much beauty in succinctness. Often more, because it gives you the facts, adds a little embroidery but leaves the rest up to you. Many Hollywood films seem unable to do that. More and more we get long, lingering panoramas across the set, and another one on the way back just in case we missed the snowfield/tundra/city scape the first time. Often accompanied by the single, quivering Netflix violin note. There’s a big difference between setting the scene and building it from the ground up, molecule by molecule so your audience has been macraméd to their seats by dullness. The cry of “Get ON with it!” seems to be a popular one in our house.

I read a book last week called The Last Calas (pron; caLAS) Recipe by Elaine Marsh. Not a long book, but utterly beautiful. Full of, dare I say, soul. It held a huge amount of respect for the subject matter but even more so, a reverence for the history of the recipe the main protagonist was finding out about as she went along.

Not only do I want to make that recipe, even knowing I won’t have the crucial aged ingredient, but I want to go back and read the book all over again, simply to lose myself in her descriptions.

She painted small word pictures; a few sentences were more than enough to whisk me right there to the levee, or the well used kitchen counter. Truly lovely, and I was sad it finished.