You read the title right… I’m doing a Book review for a book I didn’t finish. In fact, I’m doing a book review on a book I read only 100 pages of, one-third of the book.

I debated on doing this especially since I don’t often see people posting reviews for books they didn’t finish.

But let’s dive in shall we?

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

The lowest rating I think I’ve ever given a book…

Why so low?

Well, let’s start with the synopsis first.

About: Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man’s land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. (Goodreads).

So, this book was the second in a school assignment of comparing two novels. The first book wasn’t a favourite but I pushed through and ended up enjoying it more than I expected. You can find that review here.

I hoped the same would be true for this book; that I’d hate it for the first little bit and then really like it. But I couldn’t keep reading.

This book is extremely dull.

It’s written very formally which isn’t my cup of tea, but in a general sense, the writing style is just… blech. Nothing exciting, just dull.

Sure, it’s a piece of literary fiction, but literary fiction can still be good, and this is…not.

Through reading this book, even the first 100 pages, nothing happens. At all.

You’re given the main event (something that carries through the narrator’s life), and that’s it. I don’t even know how to describe how nothing happens. You read it and the story isn’t going anywhere, it’s just words on a page.

I tried pushing through because I didn’t want to not finish a book, and I also have things to do in relation to a school assignment with it, but I couldn’t read more of it.

I had to mark it DNF and I don’t intend on picking it up again.

This book may be for you, but it’s certainly not for me.