Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I just finished Anita Shreve’s latest novel, A Wedding in December, and have decided that many authors are at their best before they are discovered and required to write a book a year. Shreve’s latest is formulaic, reminiscent of others’ works, and disappointing; and I wonder if she has some sort of big contract to provide book after book to her publisher.

While I fault Shreve, who is an excellent writer, for a lack of literary-ness, I also fault the system. It seems that when an author catches on, the publisher wants more and more. And more and more means less and less time devoted to the full creation of a novel. I understand feeding the reading frenzy; but, at the same time, I do not condone churning out less-than-stellar books solely on the credibility of author’s name. The publisher’s pocketbook will be full for the short term, but it will be thin in the long run. So will the author’s purse strings.

A Wedding in December isn’t a bad book; it’s just underdeveloped. There are too many characters, some of whom are hardly drawn at all. There are too many plots and subplots. There is too much loading at the back end, which means everything happens in the last hundred pages or so. This, in turn, works against the reader investing in the book at the front end, because it makes it more difficult for a reader to plow through the first pages to be rewarded in the last.

I’m sure Shreve will go on to write other novels; and I suspect her publisher will promote her to the nth degree. At the same time, let it be known that I value her work as a budding author when she wrote The Weight of Water, Fortune’s Rock, and — her first novel — Eden Close. There is something about each of these works that does not pander to a publisher.