I just finished reading another recently released 500-plus-page novel. This was the third one I’d read. In a row.
It wasn’t bad. In fact, I kind of liked them all. But as I dutifully read page after page after page in book after book, I realized they were bloated.
The narratives swung from character to character, future to past, fun fact to pivotal point in history, without stopping to develop personalities or periods or to give me any context.
I also realized somewhere, underneath the too much of one novel, were three just enough novels — satisfying, 250-page books that just might have left me wanting more.
But big, fat, sweeping novels (invariably dubbed “epics” on the dust jackets) seem to be the thing these days. Even if the stories and the writing can’t support the length, bigger has somehow become better. And I, for one, am getting a tad tired of it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m an eager reader, usually not intimidated by a book’s size. I’ve read the epics, the Russians (“Anna Karenina,” “The Idiot”), the Germans (“The Magic Mountain”), the Americans (OK, I’ll admit I skipped “Infinite Jest”). The time it takes to read a big book doesn’t bother me.
In fact, when I’m reading something really good, I slow down once I get past the halfway mark, because I don’t want it to end too quickly. Once I finish, I often start right back in again, rereading my favorite parts, marveling at the structure, the often subtle foreshadowing, the pacing.
But length seems to have become the point, not a byproduct of the story that needs to be told. C’mon, authors! Most of us readers don’t set out to read really big books. We just want to read really good ones.
