Hot take: I spent $45 on that literary fiction bestseller everyone raves about and it was a total snooze

My book club picked "The Night Circus" last month after everyone swore it was life-changing. I dropped $45 on the hardcover at Barnes & Noble thinking I'd love it too. By page 150 I was forcing myself to keep reading just to have an opinion for the debate. The whole thing felt like pretty descriptions with zero plot payoff. Has anyone else pushed through a hyped book and ended up regretting the money and time?

2 comments

2 Comments

ross.sean3d ago

Pretty descriptions with zero plot payoff" is exactly the point. The magic of great literary fiction is the journey and the atmosphere, not some neat Hollywood ending.

evangarcia2d ago

I get what you're saying ross.sean about the "journey and the atmosphere" being the point. But here's an angle I haven't seen brought up - sometimes those pretty descriptions are actually doing plot work but in a sneaky way. Like in "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, all those long passages about trees aren't just for vibes, they're setting up the whole argument about time and connection that the characters live out. The atmosphere becomes the plot if you look at it the right way. I think people miss that because we're so trained to wait for a character to say or do something obvious. But isn't it possible that the payoff is there, just not in the form you're expecting?