I slam the book shut. Harder than a 100 page novella, surely written in earnest, deserves. What the fk. What the fk, anyway. What was that? You call that a “story”? Was the climax really on page 62? What happened to the character with the suspicious wounds? And the random one that died out of nowhere? What happened to the bad guy? Did all we do was see who they were, and then nothing? Who said you could publish this? I turn to the front matter pages to find out. And then to the blurbs of praise on the back. How? I ask.

As I tend to get with such letdowns, I am mad at this book, for wasting my time, for getting my hopes up for a good story, for getting me to invest in the characters. And, I am disappointed once again at what feels like my failure to “get” fiction.

On top of this, I’m in dismay, because I can’t bring myself to name the book or the author — because they are local. I saw them talk at a local authors’ event, and I was drawn to the quasi-academic themes and playful style that they brought into their fiction. So I looked forward to, well, at least posting on Instagram or something to document that I am indeed making a worthy effort at *reading*, and supporting local creative work, at that.

And yet, I have no praise to dress up my disappointment.

I am sure I’m missing something, of course. There was a purpose for this author’s writing besides entertaining me. They even suggested as much in their talk — the novella was a sort of an experiment in formatting, they said.

But does that mean we sacrifice story? I ask that question a lot, shaking my fist. I’m usually willing to forgive a lot for a sincerely-told story. Some people are happy with characters, scenes, or other elements of a piece of work. But for me story is king. Ideally, production makes it beautiful and shiny, but sometimes the budget is tight, and that’s perfectly acceptable to me. There’s no excuse for a shoddy, meandering, unresolved story with ..*shudders*.. loose ends.

I think I’ve said all I need to say there. I wanted to get it out before proceeding with my next attempt, which is a historical fiction book that I found in a Little Free Library. Bigfoot and I were talking about Little Free Libraries and how he is struck by how often he feels like the selection is trying to tell you something. Like “You need Jesus.” I said that I get a kick out of that, too, when it feels like the message is “You need Communism.”

Anyway, that same week I come across Upton Sinclair’s A World To Win. The grade school textbook name in exposing the horrors of the meatpacking industry wrote novels? I Google. A WWII spy novel? With a title drawn from the Communist Manifesto itself? Well, don’t mind if I do.