A textistential crisis

My grandmother once - famously, crushingly - said of my sister: "She's always been a slow reader." It's hard to know quite why my sister was singled out for this crippling observation (she is, I am pleased to attest, a perfectly capable reader). To be fair, we all must have seemed slow compared to Granny's page-devouring pace. But it was my sister who suffered the years of family jokes and gently merciless teasing and, for all I know, cannot to this day pick up a book without having to quash a lurking sense of inadequacy.

This history of persecution is by way of providing background to my latest crise de confiance: I think I may be one.

A slow reader.

I hasten to dispel any special-needs images you may be forming of me bent slack-jawed over the page, mouthing words and tracing text with a clammy fingertip. Let me explain. I borrowed a book from the library three weeks ago and it's almost time to take it back... and I'm only a quarter of the way through it. In my defence, it is a 600-page doorstop of a book (Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt). And I haven't really given it a chance: a paltry few paragraphs in bed each night (often the same ones, over and over). I haven't really sunk my teeth into it, let the characters matter to me, caught myself up in the plot. And I tell myself that I've been taking time to savour the language, rolling sentences around in my mouth, re-reading especially lustrous phrases, catching cadences with little cries of delight. That's what I tell myself.

But the fact remains that I have to take this beast of a book back to the library in three days' time and make a decision. Do I return; or do I reborrow?

I can't think of the last time I gave up on a book. I've always been one of these determined types who will plod through to the last page for the grim satisfaction of finishing. And in the hope that it might get magically better. But let's be honest, if I haven't been captivated after 160 pages, is my life really long enough to read resentfully on?

I'll give it another three days to get its claws in, then I'll return it and move on, no regrets, to a new book. Something clever, captivating and, above all, concise.

I think my sister would agree with me when I say that sometimes it's not the reader who is slow: it's the book.