finishing the book

2025 · 12

Finished the big novel. The one J. gave me over a year ago, that I gave up on a third of the way through last winter, then started again from scratch in September. Read the last pages last night by the lamp with M. asleep, closed it, sat there a while.

Not sure how I feel about it. The good kind, I think. Bits of it were a slog, I won't pretend. There's a long patch in the middle where basically nothing happens and I understand completely why I put it down the first time. If I'd hit that stretch on a tired week I'd have stalled again.

The ending pays it back though. Nothing dramatic, no big event, just all these little threads I'd half-forgotten getting quietly gathered up, including that house I couldn't place when I first tried to get going again. When it landed I felt the whole shape of it at once.

Starting over from page one was the right move. I'd have got nothing out of trying to stitch myself back into the middle. It's a book that wants reading slow and whole.

I'll tell J. eventually and let them have the satisfaction of being right. For now I want something short. A story collection maybe, the sort where you finish one and put it down. After a year with one enormous thing I'd like to finish something in a sitting again.