I mentioned elsewhere that I’d started to read The Interpretation of Murder because I felt like getting stuck into a whodunnit. Oh my life, I wish I hadn’t bothered. I said to Himself at the weekend that I never fail to finish a book no matter how bad it is, but last night I ate my words (literally). I got to page 161 out of 550-odd and I realised I couldn’t get any further.
The Interpretation of Murder is absolutely dreadful.
We have Freud with his typical misogynistic ‘maybe she asked for it’ theorising, Jung being rude and offensive, another psychoanalyst whose role never became apparent, and our very dull protagonist. Add to this one dead victim, one alive victim, and a host of other characters (all with the same name, I’m sure of it), none of whom were properly introduced and therefore completely forgettable.
Awful, awful, awful, tedious, unstructured, amateur rubbish. It’s the very worst book I’ve ever opened, I think.
I thought I would try to sell it on Amazon Marketplace but 553 copies are for sale already. I think that says it all.
I’m now on to Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Much more like it.
Page 161 isn’t so bad. I usually give up on a bad one waaaay before that! Sometimes, you can tell from page two that this isn’t going to be an easy or enjoyable read, so why do we continue? Is there some rule out there that says we HAVE to keep going, that it most likely is just the first 150 pages or so that are awful? I don’t know. I’m thinking of coming up with a new rule that if I can’t make it through the first chapter without putting the book down, then it’s going back to the library (or in the garbage……whichever).
Carleton Place Public Library, you’re right. I have to say that I’m surprised I made it so far because I did know, by and large, from page one that I didn’t like it. I’m something of a completist so that’s why I try my best to finish what I’ve started. That’s how bad this was, though.
Perhaps you should come up with a rule!
[...] I started last week, has been just as wonderful. This all makes me happy after having to discard The Interpretation of Murder for its unashamed [...]