Transgressive Reading: Out of Sequence

I just read this book: The Unseen by Katherine Webb.

Or at least, I sort-of read this book. I mostly read it. I read nearly all the words on all the pages. But I didn’t read them in order. Did I really read it, then? Let’s talk[1] about that.

For a long time, I thought the only way to read a book was to start at the first word and read to the last one. And if I didn’t – if I didn’t read every sentence, and in the order that the author intended – I hadn’t really read it. It wasn’t a true experience. It was a cheat, a fake.

I’ve gotten over that, thankfully.

The Unseen (Amazon summary here) follows three characters, two in the same time and place, and one 100 years later. (Full disclosure, modern-researcher-slash-historic-mystery-solver-interspersed-with-the-historical-happenings is a plot device that annoys[2] me[3]. In The Secret History of the Pink Carnation series, I just finally started skipping every chapter from the modern POV and got along much better.) Per that long parenthetical, the modern-day plot I left by the wayside. The modern to historic back to modern thing yanks me around too much, and I'm left disconnected from the story.

Anyway.

I’m left with the two women in 1911, living in the same house whose stories are connected but each have different narrative POVs. I didn’t feel like waiting to find out what happened with Woman A by being diverted by Woman B. 

So I did the unthinkable, the creative-vision-destorying: I read out of sequence, skipping Woman B’s plot to read all of Woman A’s, and then back through to read B. It made my life much better, let me tell you.

I suppose it depends on what one wants out of a reading experience. If all the threads are engaging enough and the writing captivating enough[4], I want the narrative as the author intends.

But in the case of The Unseen, I wanted light. Fluffy. Easy to follow. And the POV hopping was harshing my mellow, so I fixed it[5].

To answer the opening question of this post, I'll say yes. Yes, I read The Unseen. Did I receive the story the way it was meant to be? Probably not. But I did read it.

So here's my reading advice: read how you like. You want only the book sequenced as written? Awesome, read from Word Open to Word Close. You want to skim? Skim away. You want to learn about this plot and these characters, not that plot and those characters? Sweet, skip around until you find the thread you like.

In the current patois: You do you.

xo,

Devo

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[1] Rather, let’s I talk at you about that.

[2] Feeling compelled to defend myself, I point out that Shakespeare himself gave up on the Chris Sly Taming of the Shrew frame after one scene.

[3] Yes yes, there are many narrative devices that bug. But I promise there are many devices that I love!

[4] Both very subjective criteria

[5] Did the same with Way of Shadows – found the A plot and followed it, ignoring all the political machinations and cultural gobbledygook that put books-with-maps on my do-not-read list.