When I picked up The
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, I was sure I was on to a winner. Russian novelist?
Brilliant. Magic Realism? Check my bookshelf – it’s stuffed with it. The devil
appearing as an undercover character? Love it. Talking cat – don’t even need to
say it. So on opening my battered copy, I was excited.
A hundred pages in – I
couldn’t care less. So I stopped reading it. I can’t explain to you why – maybe
the cultural nuances failed to translate for me, maybe there were too many subversive Russian male poets called Nikolayevich – but I couldn’t summon any enthusiasm for it.
Actually coming to a point of not wanting to finish a book
has happened to me many, many times before – I do have an English degree after
all, and my lecturers seemed to have a particular enthusiasm for Joseph Conrad
– but abandoning a book that seemed like it would be amazing is a terrible
feeling. I’ve found myself in a grip of self-doubt: what if it’s me, not the
book? Is it my own ignorance and philistine brain that’s holding me back from
loving this book? THERE’S A CAT WHO POURS HIMSELF VODKA - there is literally nothing on this earth that makes me more excited than that prospect.
This doesn’t often happen with me. When I think I’m going to
like a book, having a rough idea of what it’s all about, I usually do. Things I
think I’ll hate, I usually do – case in point, Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye – if you’re an angry young
man who likes smacking people around and don’t much like women, knock yourself
out. I entered into Bukowski's grimy world fully aware that it would not agree with me. But this? Awful.
So I’m feeling bruised and sore. It feels like being rejected by a boy at
a school disco. Damn you Mikhail!
Have you experienced this? Am I blowing this out of
proportion, or do you feel bad when you give up on a book that promised so
much, and failed to deliver for you?
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