The Book That Beat Me

What’s a book you never finished but still think about?

Many years ago I took The Brothers Karamazov on holidays because I thought this was what holidays were for. I imagined lazy afternoons with Dostoyevsky. A chair somewhere quiet. Maybe a cup of coffee. Enough uninterrupted time to wrestle with God and freedom and suffering and whatever else nineteenth-century Russians were prepared to throw at you. What actually happened was that I opened the book and fell asleep. Not once. Repeatedly.

I would make another determined attempt the next day and Dostoyevsky would still be there waiting for me with his complicated family and his moral anguish and his enormous questions about human existence. And I would last perhaps ten minutes before my eyes closed again.

It would be easy to blame the book. To say The Brothers Karamazov was too slow or too difficult or simply not for me. But that wouldn’t be fair. There was nothing wrong with Dostoyevsky. My tank was empty.

I think I had reached that holiday carrying more exhaustion than I realised. And some books need you to bring something to them. They don’t simply entertain you while you lie there half-conscious. They ask you to meet them halfway. I wasn’t capable of that.

Years later I read The Idiot. It wasn’t easy either. Dostoyevsky had not suddenly become easy reading. But this time I stayed awake. This time I finished.

Which makes me think that sometimes we meet the right book at the wrong time. We interpret our inability to continue as some great judgement on the book or on ourselves when the explanation may be much simpler. We are tired.

So The Brothers Karamazov still sits there somewhere in my pile of unfinished books. Dostoyevsky was beyond me first time around. Maybe one day I’ll try again. I’ll just make sure I’m well-rested next time.

Daily writing prompt

What’s a book you never finished but still think about?

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