What puts you off a book immediately?

[EishetChayil]

For me it's opening a book and discovering it's written in the second person. I can't bring myself to read on. It makes me squirm too much. Just about acceptable in a (very) short story, but not a whole novel.

I'm also no fan of epistolary form, if I'm perfectly honest.

"Sex and the City" meets "Clan of the Cave Bear"!

Descriptions of UK women wearing panties.... It's knickers! Just read this in The Christmas Killer so came on to share my irritation.

I also hate present tense, particularly in historical novels.

What I am most often annoyed about though is when an author deliberately withholds information, but alludes to it. “They were never the same after what they saw the summer they turned twelve” fucking tell us what happened then rather than going another three chapters before saying “if only they hadn’t decided to go to that party that summer they turned twelve” and still not tell us. I read a book earlier this year that only revealed the information in the very last chapter.

I’m the same vein, I read a popular thriller a couple of years ago where one of the first person POV characters was in on the kidnapping, but this wasn’t revealed until halfway through, but there was no hint that perhaps he might not be panicking as much as he was making out to the rest of his family.

Dramatic irony is much more satisfying as a reader, but I suspect it is harder to write which is why authors opt for these lazy techniques for adding suspense.

There are quite a few books published nowadays where it is painfully clear that the authors are battling against their own strictly limited knowledge of the world. I think this is, at least in part, due to how the literary world is somewhat enthralled by bright young things, straight out of university, who haven’t done anything.

A couple of years ago I started reading “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgensten, and on the first page there’s the line “What kind of circus is only open at night?” as if opening at night is abnormal for a circus. And then you realise that the author is thinking of a carnival or fairground instead of a circus. I didn’t get through many pages of that book…

I've just put down 'Matrix' by Lauren Groff. Got halfway through then decided life's too short. Bored bored bored. Some lovely writing but I don't care about ANY of it. And the present tense really starts to grate after a while.

But yes, it's her ignorance that shines through. It's supposed to be a historical novel based on Marie de France, but it doesn't talk about her writing really at all. It's the 12th century but the attitudes are so modern. The nuns are all lesbians and there's loads of sex scenes which are quite tiresome. It all just seems like the work of someone who's done no research and knows very little about the 12th century, religious life, or the ways of thinking at the time. But she writes nice sentences so somehow she's lauded as a genius.