This may make me sound like a traitor to readers everywhere, but I am generally not a fan of big books, specifically ones that exceed 450 pages in length.
That’s not to say I don’t like any large books. One of my favorite books of all time, Gone With The Wind, is nearly 1,000 pages long. However, in recent years, it seems to me most of the thicker novels I’ve suffered through have been long purely for the sake of being long.
Unfortunately, I believe I know the reason for this.
Across the literary community, there is this presumption that if a book is large and takes ages to read then said book is deep and important and the reader should take it seriously. After all, so many classical works of literature boast a heavy word count.
“Why use one word when you can use twenty, my good man?” say the classic writers, smoking their pipes and not raising their ten plus children. “Why not add in a stock character and detail their entire lives even though they will ultimately have no baring on the plot whatsoever?”
I’m not saying I’m incapable of being patient and waiting it out, but you got to give me something book.
Don’t string me along for 300 plus pages just because I’ve become invested enough in the plot and characters to wait.
Don’t put in pages worth of padding just so you can disappoint me with a predictable twist and cardboard villains.
One of the most aggravating reads I’ve ever sat through was The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma, a hefty 720 page monster that took me over a month to finish. I stayed with it for so long because it had an excellent premise which the author got to…eventually. But in the meantime the reader had to slog through hundreds of pages of extraneous material that had no impact on the story at all.
Honestly, I have no idea how it got past an editor’s red pen of doom. The main character doesn’t even show up until the novel is almost halfway over. How do you even get away with that?!
Then there was The Magus by John Fowles which was the most dense, pretentious, and mind-numbingly dull book I’ve ever read. Getting past the annoyingly self-congratulating attitudes of the main characters, the readers is subjected to page upon page of backstory that can be summed up in a paragraph or two.
(Sidenote: If you’re having difficulty sleeping, listen to the audiobook for The Magus on Youtube. I haven’t slept this heavily in years.)
That’s not to say a story should never be long, but there has to be some criteria, wouldn’t you agree?
I’ll answer my own rhetorical question with a non-rhetorical yes.
Here are a handful of justifications for writing a large novel:
- It takes place over the course of many years/months.
- There are multiple characters whose prospectives help increase the depth and overall quality of the story.
- The story requires time devoted to explaining the world and how it operates to further engross the reader and create a feeling of realness.
- Extra time is needed to tie up loose ends.
- It is creating an atmosphere that will help with the climax’s pay-off.
If none of the reasons above are applicable, then I have no interest in reading it. I’m sorry, but there are hundreds of books out there that I could be enjoying and I don’t want to waste my time with a story that just wants to meander on forever.
