Book Divorce

I'll stay with a bad book. Like any participant in an ill-fated relationship, I linger to the very end, wondering why the two of us just can't make it work and get along. I imagine my patience will make the text stop hurting my feelings and forgetting our anniversary. This patience, however, could spell my downfall as a reader. While I wait up for my bad lover of a book to come home, all the good books--the ones that would treat me right--pass me by.

Earlier this summer, I entered a doomed relationship with Isabel Allende's Zorro. Allende's work and I have gotten along well in the past. House of the Spirits holds steady on my top ten list of favorite books. And even though I've never seen an episode of "Zorro" or any of the movies, I committed to the text of Zorro. It took me over two weeks to break out of this monotonous relationship, and I had to worm my way out of it with some time-honored cliches: "It's not you, baby, it's me. Maybe we should read other people."

Then I met Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. It was a whirlwind courtship. The book promised me a fresh perspective on that mysterious stranger, Dracula. And in the beginning, this text was as authoritative as a warm hand on the small of my back. I trusted it, and we were married by page 150 (out of 642).

And then I noticed a few unsettling details. The book claimed to contain many perspectives, but the narrative droned in the same tone. It didn't matter if the narrator was an 18-year-old girl or her vampire-hunting mother.

I let that slide.

And then the delicious tension that kept us up all night in that beginning began to melt. I asked myself, Would a person who'd been kidnapped by the Dark Master really write a 60-page letter to his daughter explaining how it happened... in the time that it was happening? No, it wouldn't happen that way.

I pretended for a long time that nothing was wrong. SPOILER ALERT: I finally reached my limit when our heroes encounter Dracula in his lair. Throughout the novel, the world's most famous vampire sent minions to kill, maim, and destroy everything surrounding the lives of our protagonists, and you know why? I'll tell you why: he needed a professor to catalogue his collection of books... forever!

Really, The Historian? Really?

I am ashamed to say I actually finished this novel, even when it was clear there was no helping it or the relationship we'd built together. I'd like to believe I'll never do this again, but what can I say? I'm unlucky in love.