Book Review: Night Train to Lisbon

First book I’m abandoning in three years

This was the third book I started reading this year, way back in January. The fact that I’ve read 13 other books while I was supposed to be reading this one tells you a lot. Here’s another fact: I hate giving up on books (in fact, I also hate giving up on movies). I’m one of those people who, if I start it, no matter how bad I think it is, I will finish it. Otherwise how can I give an informed opinion? I even finished reading the first Twilight book. But I’ve tried again and again to finish reading this, and I’m constantly thinking about how much I hate it. I read 200 of its 430 pages, so it’s not like I didn’t make an effort.

The cover informs me it is a “phenomenal international bestseller” that has sold “over two million copies worldwide”. A review says it’s “one of the best books I have read in a long time”. All I can say to Ms Allende, author of the above quote, is that she must have been reading some truly awful/depressingly average things recently for this to be one of the best books she’s read. That, or she doesn’t mind reading a book that sounds like it’s still in draft form. The reading is so subpar that I’m actually shocked by the shortcuts he takes in descriptions and dialogues. Half the book is also extracts from a book and the letters of the man he’s interested in. When I’m reading a text, I don’t want the writing to pierce the illusion — in the sense that the writing, for me, is so blatantly awful, simplistic, that I can’t make it through a page without gritting my teeth. 

I know I’ve posted several quotes from the book, and that many people have liked or reblogged them. It’s not that I don’t like those quotes — the book is about a bibliophile. Of course, as a reading community, we’re going to enjoy those. But I keep wondering if there’s been something lost in translation (the original text is in German). However, surely if it was the translation, it wouldn’t be continuous?  

It has been compared to Shadow of the Wind, which angers me. Zafon’s book is an amazing achievement, wonderfully written and magical, and this book is filled with bumps. I kept remembering a quote by Hornby, which I read in one of his Believer articles, saying that if you don’t like a book, just put it down. He was mainly speaking about people who are new readers, who feel compelled to read classics instead of thrillers or whatever, and that makes them hate reading. He thinks it’s more important to have people love reading than be a snob about what they read.

You know what else it is? I’ve thoroughly enjoyed almost every book I’ve read since last summer. I think there was just one I hated. I’ve read some great stuff recently.

I haven’t put down a book unread in three years. Three years! That’s quite a while, you know I’ve read a few crap books in that time. Not many, because I tend to pick well, but definitely a few. I’m annoyed at myself, but mostly at Mercier. The book reads like self-indulgent babble. It bores. He does not have much tact as a writer.