An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears
I have a reoccurring problem in my life: whether to finish a book I’ve started or to just give up. It’s why I started the Book Reviews on Books I’ve Never Finished section of this blog. As an example, I am 385 pages into a 685 page book. The book is “An Instance of the Fingerpost,” by British author, journalist and art historian, Iain Pears. He is obviously a long-winded kind of fellow.
This book is written in sections with each section written in a different voice. I really enjoyed the voice of the first character introduced. The second character was fairly intriguing, but the third (where I’m currently stuck) is a snore.
The story is based in 19th Century England. There is civil unrest across the land and when the murder of an Oxford fellow occurs, four men write four very long perspectives on the crime. It a study, of sorts, in how different people will perceive the same incident in very different ways.
I’ve been reading this book in the evenings and after a long day, this book just doesn’t keep my eyes open – but after putting in 385 pages worth of reading, I am hesitant to give up. After all, 385 pages represents a lot of time, but so does another 300 pages.
The verdict is still out as to whether this book will end up on the Book Reviews on Books I’ve Never Finished page. If you have any opinions, I’d love to hear them.
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I read a lot, but I have a rule: no books longer than 300 pages. I feel that if you can’t make your point in that amount of space, you are really wasting my time. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule–A Hundred Years of Solitude and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay come to mind–but not many. I say give up on the book. Not because of my silly rule, but because you don’t really seem to like it all that much, and that probably is going to change over the next 300 pages.