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Say ‘No!’ To Misery Fiction

 Passing the library the other day, I popped in and selected these two novels for what, I hoped, would be an enjoyable reading experience…

The blurbs were promising. The covers were pleasant to mine eye. The number of pages weren’t too many or too few. Two books, I hoped, that would contribute to my January ‘read at least 6 books’ target. 

‘Needlemouse’ was very entertaining. One of those engaging novels you can whip through in one sitting, or at least in the space of 24 hours, which I did. 

‘A Girl Made of Air’ however, was a different kettle of miserable dead fish altogether. I don’t know why but I thought it might be in the same vein as ‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern which I enjoyed enormously. It wasn’t. The prose was readable enough, if a tad verbose, but it soon became clear that the initial tone of abject misery wasn’t going to be lifted with occasional segues into comedy or general light-heartedness of any sort. Come on, author! Even Shakespeare knew it is imperative to inject a bit of light relief to give the audience a breather in an otherwise doom and gloom plot line. That’s why he put a drunken night porter in ‘Macbeth’ to provide a lewd jokes interlude before the bloody massacres continued apace. ‘Where’s the comedy juggler?’ I thought. ‘Or a cute baby elephant that gets up to endearing japes?’ The author did mention llamas quite a lot, but even they were depressed. And everyone knows that a llama can be comedy gold, what with the projectile spitting and fluffy hair-do. 

Anyway, at page 57, I decided to hop ahead to randomly selected pages in search of a glimmer of humour. Nope - couldn’t find it anywhere. If anything, the plot appeared to be growing grimmer and grimmer. It was like putting a load of heavy fabric clothes in the tumble drier and finding it still soggy in the middle at the end of the cycle. A constant sense of impending laundry-based gloom. I half-expected the back page to be coated in cyanide or arsenic so the reader could lick it and put themselves out of their plot-induced misery. 

Life is too short to waste time reading such depressing fiction. There’s enough misery in the real world already. And that is why I write comedy! This novel will not be part of my January 6. And I’m reaching for an emergency Terry Practchett, now, to perk myself up. (‘Unseen Academicals’ in case you are wondering.)


Comments

Anonymous said…
Indeed. Can be said about other things too. No need to waste time
KJ
12 January 2023 at 19:44
Denise said…
It’s bad enough being dragged down by the real world, KJ, without fiction joining in. Fun fiction, that’s what I say!!
13 January 2023 at 09:45
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