I don't think I'm going to finish this book...

I thought this wildly buzzy debut would break my reading slump. I was wrong.

Kids I’ve been in a bit of a reading slumpity slump. And I had an advance of a book sitting here that’s had ALL the buzz. People are super excited about it! And based on the blurb and the title I thought, yeah, ok, this is IT. This is gonna break through. I won’t be able to put this baby down.

Reader, I put it down. Don’t worry, I’m going to to tell you what the book was. But first: what’s happening here? People really do like this a lot and I am not one of them. That’s happened before—books that weren’t for me in the past included Writers and Lovers, which many people adored, and The Catcher in the Rye, to save my self by using a title by an author who is dead and who I cannot offend (and I would offend the hell out of him if I could, actually, the man did some very creepy things).

I thought that maybe what I disliked were “coming of age” stories. But there have been more that seemed to me to fit in this same category since—books that I put down because of a very specific frustration—that didn’t fit that trope. My Year of Rest and Relaxation was one, and there have been others, and now there is this: The Ministry of Time.

It’s everything it says it is—a book about dragging people who should be dead in there own centuries forward into our own, conspiracies and crushes and funny anachronisms and a lot of intense musing about what it means to belong and what should and should not constitute identity and how much we ourselves should care. It’s outsiders getting in and dry British humor and I am pretty sure it’s about to be a grand twisted plot to use time travel to do something big and adventurous that will surely end badly, there have been many hints of such. But I am on page 222, and I don’t think I’m going to find out because as I’m reading, I don’t feel jazzed and interested and dying to find out more. I feel mildly irritated and uncomfortable.

First off—I think the discomfort is intentional and a good thing. There are a lot of challenging ideas in here and I’m here for them. Are sexual liaisons just actions, or are they identity? Why does appearance dictate so much of how people perceive us and how does it eventually overtake how we perceive ourselves? Who can get away with what and why?

So why am I not going to turn the next page? Because for me, this protagonist is a really really tough hang, and it’s because—again, for me—she lets things happen rather than making them happen. Her choice—and it is always a choice, she does have agency here—is nearly always the path of least resistance, the easier thing, the thing that is the least demanding or risky, and she owns that often, especially as she foreshadows the ways that choice of inaction is going to cause the dominoes to come tumbling down. This is the way this writer (who is a very good writer) wanted to tell this story, and I can see all the reasons why. It’s a story that is in many ways about exactly that.

And maybe you can see how, if I were studying this book for a class or an interview, I would finish it and I would grapple with why it does and doesn’t please me as a reader and what it set out to do and whether it achieves it.

But I’m not in class, there’s no syllabus. I’m a person living in a world that feels chaotic and unpredictable and a little dangerous right now, and this is not what I want in a book right this instant. Maybe not ever, because I am also a person far more inclined to do things I’ll later regret than to regret things I didn’t do—in fact, that’s pretty much my entire personality. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Leap before you look, action is the antidote to anxiety, go for a walk, find someone to help, find something to do.

I’ve had to learn to slow down and think, rather than learning—as I think this protagonist will—to quit thinking and take action. Is that one result of being born into a world where someone like me is likely to be able to fix her mistakes, find forgiveness, start over? Almost certainly. Is it also a reason I’m not going to keep going? Yes it is. Give me The Queen’s Gambit, give me The Other Black Girl, give me any book where a flawed bullheaded protagonist makes all the wrong choices and does all the wrong things but makes things happen.

If the things happen to them—even if they are really cool interesting things—it’s not the book for me.

PLEASE tell me if you read this and liked it (tons of people did) and why! I’m actually dying to discuss.

Meanwhile, a speed list of books that might break you out of your reading rut if you prefer your protagonists to move fast and break things. I’m leaning a bit toward mystery thriller here because we need a good propulsive plot when we’re inclined to go look at the Goop sale or the Gap/Doen collab every time there’s a pause in the action. Or is that just me?

The Five Year Lie, Sarina Bowen

Florida Woman, Deb Rogers (OH, the terrible choices this chick makes…)

Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto (ditto, I can hardly stand it)

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, Elle Cosimano

Yellowface, R. F. Kuang

The Dog of the North, Elizabeth McKenzie (things HAPPEN to this protagonist. And then she does things. Weird things, all conveyed in delightfully literary prose. You probably missed this—it’s worth a look! It will balance any of the lighter ones perfectly.)

From me, I think you want The Chicken Sisters here. Both Mae and Amanda are certainly making choices. Dumb, provoked by a reality TV host choices, but choices just the same. Although I love the moment in In Her Boots when Rhett dumps a load of manure into her ex’s nice clean pick-up bed. Dude didn’t think she’d really DO it. And poor Flair in Playing the Witch Card never stops doing things—but her goal is to keep magic and history all squashed up into the box where she’s hidden things, so the vibe is more playing catch-up than riding the wind. (Eventually the wind has to be ridden though.)

That’s it from me this week! Talk to me, kids. Give me a smart romp to get me out of this slump and tell me it’s ok to bail on even a book everyone else loves.