# What's the last novel you read that you didn't understand?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 6, 2017, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966 "2017-05-06T01:39:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/1 "2017-05-06T01:39:02Z")
I recently finished _The Children’s Home_ by Charles Lambert, and I did not get it. I mean, it seemed like it was lumbering along to some sort of big reveal, but…I didn’t understand most of what was going on in the last 1/4th of the book. I do not feel bad about this, though, because from the reviews on Amazon and Good Reads, most people felt the same way.
So, I’m curious about what the last work of written fiction to leave you baffled was.
And, do you find that not understanding a book leaves you unable to like it, too? I definitely do, which is a bit odd considering there are so many songs I don’t really understand but still really like ([like this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx9gb5doh6k)). Maybe it’s because I expect stories to make sense in a way that songs and even poems don’t need to - perhaps due to the length of time one invests in books vs. a song? Hmm.
Anyway, your confusing read?
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### Author:  [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/2 "2017-05-06T01:54:45Z")
“The Unreasoning Mask” by Phillip Jose Farmer had me scratching my head. And I’ve read most of Phillip K. Dick and never had that problem.
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### Author:  [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/3 "2017-05-06T01:57:05Z")
Easy, but that could be because I’ve yet to finish it: Gravity’s Rainbow. I make it abut a hundred pages in and give up, every time.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/4 "2017-05-06T01:59:24Z")
_Gravity’s Rainbow_ requires 200 pages to get into. It’s worth it.
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### Author:  [@Nayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nayna)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/5 "2017-05-06T02:07:54Z")
The Sound and the Fury. I try again every year or two, but never get more than 1/4 through. I can’t think of any book that I’ve actually read all the way through and didn’t understand.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/6 "2017-05-06T02:33:08Z")
The Final Encyclopedia by Gordon Dickson. It’s the grand culiminating finale of the whole Dorsai cycle…and I am just bodgered if I can see what the point was supposed to be.
(Oops; unfair to the premise of the thread; I read this when it came out. My flub.)
I read and enjoyed Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Since I’ve got a mathematics education, I got a lot of the math in-jokes. But, ultimately, I don’t think I understood the book.
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### Author:  [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/7 "2017-05-06T03:00:36Z")
In the not understanding because I could tell I wasn’t smart enough category: Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar.
In the not understanding because I didn’t understand how this was actually a book that someone felt the need to publish: the Patrick Melrose series by Edward St. Aubyn.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/8 "2017-05-06T03:59:17Z")
The ending of _The Difference Engine_ was a bit puzzling, to me, when I read it a few years back.
I’ve also read a couple of novels that baffled me as to how they could ever have gotten published, not the least because of the state of editing, but that’s really a different ballpark entirely.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/9 "2017-05-06T15:18:37Z")
One Hundred Years of Solitude didn’t make an ounce of sense to me…but I think that might be the author’s intention.
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### Author:  [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/10 "2017-05-06T15:54:15Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> …I read and enjoyed Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Since I’ve got a mathematics education, I got a lot of the math in-jokes. But, ultimately, I don’t think I understood the book.
Anathem defeated me, but then my last math class was 10th grade gemoetry and IIRC, I didn’t exactly distinguish myself.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/11 "2017-05-06T16:40:48Z")
I’m not sure I completely grasped J.J. Abrams’ puzzle-novel _S._
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### Author:  [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/12 "2017-05-06T19:51:29Z")
I finished _Declare_ by Tim Powers, but damned if I can explain what it was about. It’s a Le Carre-ish Cold War spy novel with fantasy elements. Mount Ararat was involved somehow. The novel won some awards so apparently I was the only one who didn’t get it.
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### Author:  [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/13 "2017-05-06T20:44:49Z")
> [@epbrown01](#):
>
> Easy, but that could be because I’ve yet to finish it: Gravity’s Rainbow. I make it abut a hundred pages in and give up, every time.
Yup, that’s mine. I actually really enjoy the parts I read - maybe 100-150 pages each time… and then I give up.
I’m also pretty sure I didn’t understand _The Crying of Lot 49_ either, so maybe it’s a Pynchon thing.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/14 "2017-05-06T20:56:25Z")
I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on in **As I Lay Dying** , by William Faulkner. Could not get past the dialect.
Also, while not a novel, I want to mention T. S. Eliot’s **The Waste Land** , which I also didn’t understand. Can’t use dialect as an excuse for that one.
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### Author:  [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/15 "2017-05-06T21:05:44Z")
Well, I’ve never had anything I couldn’t understand, but I’ve had some which I was sorry I bothered to put myself through.
Triton, by Samuel R. Delany was certainly one of those. I read it when it was new, back in the late seventies, and found it misleading, boring, and ultimately depressing in an oh-so-very-seventies way. To me, that whole decade was themed “we know we are in the right track, because we think everything sucks.” Had we not been rescued towards the end by Star Wars, I think I may well have turned psycho.
I read The Heart is A Lonely Hunter as a standard reading requirement in school, and had a similar experience. Forcing me to suck that mess into my head through my eyes was a sure way to get me to refuse to go anywhere near that novelist’s work again.
I never tried to get through anything like James Joyce, infamous for stories that require the reader to do lots of extra credit homework, just to make it through a chapter. Chances are I might have found that mystifying.
Of course, it could just be egotism. Maybe when I think I despise and author, what’s really going on, is that I don’t “get it,” and I’m blaming the writer for my ineptitude as a reader, but I don’t FEEL that’s true.
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### Author:  [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/16 "2017-05-06T21:20:29Z")
I made it about 100 pages into Infinite Jest before O gave up because I had no idea what was supposed to be going on, and really didn’t care.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/17 "2017-05-06T22:47:38Z")
> [@erysichthon](#):
>
> I finished _Declare_ by Tim Powers, but damned if I can explain what it was about. It’s a Le Carre-ish Cold War spy novel with fantasy elements. Mount Ararat was involved somehow. . . .
That one was murky! I liked it, but, yeah, it was damned hard to say what exactly was going on in it.
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#):
>
> . . . Triton, by Samuel R. Delany was certainly one of those. I read it when it was new, back in the late seventies, and found it misleading, boring, and ultimately depressing in an oh-so-very-seventies way. . . .
I have a friend who refuses to read anything by John Varley, because Varley wrote “Titan” which sounds like “Triton” and he hated Triton to the burning pits of hell. Now that’s hatred!
The only Delany I’ve ever read was “The Einstein Intersection” which also didn’t make any sense, but at least it was kinda evocative. The image of “Kid Death,” the magical/mythic gunslinger remains with me.
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2017, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/18 "2017-05-07T05:58:40Z")
John Dies at the End.
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### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2017, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/19 "2017-05-07T06:27:23Z")
I’m about two thirds through Alice in Wonderland (or whatever the actual book is called) and though I understand it well enough, I’m not sure I _understand_ it.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2017, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-last-novel-you-read-that-you-didnt-understand/785966/20 "2017-05-07T06:47:58Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#):
>
> I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on in **As I Lay Dying** , by William Faulkner. Could not get past the dialect.
Wow, my favorite Faulker novel. Sorry you didn’t get it.
It was a long time ago, and I wouldn’t necessarily say I didn’t understand it, but I do remember being confused often while reading _The Magus_.
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