Everyday Canvas

On Literary Sanity

Prompt: What are the most unbelievable things in the books you read, excluding the genres' normally accepted style, form, or content? In other words, what made you doubt the writer’s literary sanity and know-how? If you wish, you might give examples from the books you’ve read.

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My first and foremost pet peeve has to do with serial novels. It is my understanding that each story has to have a central conflict, which needs to be solved by the end of the book. Good serial writers, always, take care of the central conflict in a book, so the story feels finished to the reader. Leaving an untied string of a subplot or a problem with another character to be taken on in the next book is perfectly acceptable. What really gets me is the writer who stops the main story in the middle without bringing to the conclusion its central problem. This is usually done with the sales in mind, which turns me off so much that I have put such authors on my do-not-read list.

My second pet peeve is the false reasoning behind an event or the inane, unexplained, shocking twist in a story or inside a character that doesn’t make any sense or most endings of Deus Ex Machina. I have no problem with twists and turns, but they have to be explained and they should show good or at least good enough reasons behind them. Here is an excerpt from one of my reviews for a novel centered around a family secret, although in this novel, the characterization was quite good: “Throughout the story, however, I hoped the author would come up with a more satisfactory conclusion of what she offered the reader as a family secret. It wasn't so; the secret failed to be a secret.”

My third pet peeve is the tear-jerker melodramas and senseless romances with no real story to them. This excerpt is from one of my book reviews. Without giving away the title or the author of the book, here it is: “In a one-room schoolhouse, a young girl (high school age) falls in love with a boy, who is superior in Algebra plus logic and thinking, but this boy has a deadly disease. They fall in love and the boy dies. What? Where is the conflict in this one?
So it is a tear-jerker, and the writing and prose are good, but where's the story? All forty-some reviews on Amazon have given it five stars with only one four-star review. Doesn't anyone care about story construction?”

Then, concerning the writer’s literary sanity, there was this debut novel that had so many holes in its construction that it felt like a first draft. Still, in my Amazon review of four years ago, because she was a new writer, I gave it three stars, which made the author see red. All her five-star donors were from her church who buzzed over my review. This writer got so upset that I deleted my review from Amazon, although not from WdC. Even then, she began stalking me online. To this day, she is among my followers (!) on FB; what her intentions are is a puzzle. Here is an excerpt from my review:

“And there are many secrets in the book. W's mother's actions for example. Well, she is not his real mother, and she hates everybody. Plus, she does all sorts of nasty things to people. This is explained in the last chapter as her having Alzheimer's for twenty years that no one knew about. This explanation felt like a last-minute cop-out to me.
Then there's the unfinished sub-storyline about L's once-upon-a-time girlfriend who shows up in town with two small children who look like they are L's, but that storyline is cut as is. The author explains at the end of the book that L's story will be the second book in the series. I felt, too much information was given here to leave this sub-story--which was deeply attached to the main plot--dangling.
Then there's the main character's unexplained mental condition. Her phobias, her panic attacks do not have a basis. As she had a perfectly happy childhood with model parents, how did she develop these abnormalities?
With holes left in its construction, this novel felt underdone to me.”

I usually take it easy on authors, especially the newbie authors, and I am generous with the stars. Yet, as a reader, I expect a lot from a book on which I have spent time and money.