Losing the Plot

I love non fiction. The Master & His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist is ideal, a fascinating study of the brain and how it works. If you are interested in creativity it’s a gold mine.

Sadly I can’t say the same for fiction. Of course I SHOULD appreciate the works of great authors but impatience kicks in, pages gets skipped and when it is put back on the shelf the bookmark is rarely further than half way.

Recently FOMO loomed as I read a review of The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. She is a Nobel laureate and this 900 page book apparently wrestles with the great philosophical themes of life in telling the story of Jacob, a charismatic 18th century Jewish mystic in Eastern Europe.

First impressions were good. Her ability to breathe energy into the tiniest of details is wonderful. It’s like having a great Renaissance painting come to life. The weather, the room, the food, the people, their clothes, their conversations are all painstakingly etched as the sepia-toned characters take shape.

Second impressions are not so good. After 300 pages of wading waist deep in words, the details lose their sparkle and the old malaise strikes. It’s like going to the Tate Modern and being told you can only view the exhibition through a magnifying glass.

This is a left brain book. The left hemisphere focuses on what we know, it likes to categorise and order things. So the details work well. The right brain enjoys what we don’t know, loose relationships between things, contradictions, and I’m crying out for a sense of the bigger picture.

I have to admit defeat. Disappointingly, I have quite literally lost the plot. Again.