DNF at p.310, 19 September

I stopped because I could see the shape of the rest of it, and the shape was one I had already been given twice.

To be clear about what I am not saying: I am not saying a novel shouldn't hurt, or that suffering is an unserious subject. I have read plenty of grim books and finished them and rated them highly. What I object to is the ratio. Every time this one arrives somewhere survivable it arranges a fresh cruelty, and at some point I stopped reading it as a portrait of a life and started reading it as a design; and once you can see the designer's hand, the only thing left to feel is managed.

The other problem is that the world has no friction in it. Everyone is beautiful and successful and lives in a New York with no rent. That may well be deliberate. It does mean the only solid thing in the book is the pain, which made the pain feel decorative to me rather than earned.

I know people for whom this book mattered a great deal and I'm not arguing with them; it did not do to me what it did to them, and I don't think that's a failure of attention on my part.

Three. I gave the copy to a friend who loves it and she was welcome to it.

Read instead: Shuggie Bain. Same quantity of hurt, and a world built around it.