I am trying to learn from Kapoor's Age of Vice.
I am trying not to be annoyed by the last 130-150 pages, and am trying to remember that this may just not have been the right time for this book for me.
I am trying not to feel like the author's self-indulgence has robbed me of time.
It's not a bad novel. There are some lovely moments of insight. It does a nice job of tackling a problem using multiple intersecting perspectives.
Kapoor could maybe have prioritized certain plot elements and characters, and eliminated others in order to crystallize and sharpen the whole (this is a lesson I can learn: I have a baggy, problematic, self-indulgent manuscript that needs to be turned into something better).
Kapoor and I could both do with editing more like the imagist poets did: what is the thing? Find it, describe it, cut out all the connective tissue so that you can really see it.
Pivoting to the positive: should I read something fluffy next (Kevin Kwan's Lies and Weddings), or a Nigerian political novel (Ayobami Adebayo's A Spell of Good Things), or an Australian novel about a woman's moral/mortal crises (Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional)?
I'm leaning towards Charlotte Wood, perhaps because it will offer a single narrator rather than the complexities offered in the Kapoor work. Also because it offers Australia (a change of scenery given that I have just been "in" India).
Did I mention I have a lovely new laptop from work that absolutely will not get along with my wifi at home though it works fine at work or in a cafe? If I restart everything, I get about 3 minutes of wifi use at home. I have spent almost three weeks trying to solve this problem, with hours on the phone with various kinds of tech support. Today's move will be asking the wifi provider for a new wifi gateway. I have written this short post at home, and have been prompted by blogger several times that updates are "failed" because I am no longer connected to the internet . . . So, time to reboot folks. See you on the other side.
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