Books Long and Short

Although I, like all readers, read books greatly varying in length, from thick tomes to slim volumes, I have particularly noticed this contrast in the past couple of months. Although I am a fairly fast reader, it took me a while to get through, for example, Jeffrey Eugenides’s “The Marriage Plot,” and, especially, Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Stranger’s Child.” Then, without consciously looking for shorter books, I found myself reading a series of very small books, including Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending,” Michelle Latiolais’ “Widow,” Alan Bennett’s “Smut,” and Anita Desai’s “The Artist of Disappearance.” (I have posted on all of these recently.) Long and short -- each has its advantages. I can “settle in” to a long novel with the feeling of really getting to know the characters and settings, and of becoming almost an inhabitant of the world the author has created. If the novel is wonderful, I relish being in that world, and am reluctant to leave it when I finish the book. This is part of the appeal of the great Victorian novels that I treasure, such as those by Eliot, Dickens, and Gaskell, and of the novels of a slightly later age by James and Wharton. If the novel is less engaging, or particularly difficult to navigate for various reasons, I may feel at times that reading it is a bit of a slog. On the other hand, short books are easy to carry around (I can even put them into my capacious handbag for easy availability when there is a break in my day, or a wait in line), and there is the satisfaction of either finishing it quickly, or savoring it slowly but still not taking forever to read it. Sometimes short novels are dense and intense, and therefore satisfying; at other times they feel a bit incomplete, a little insubstantial. Clearly these are all broad generalizations. And obviously the length of the book is only a very small factor in deciding what to read, in whether the book is “good” or not, and in whether I enjoy it. But it is one factor, and the experience of reading a book is subtly influenced by its length.