My reading year did not get off to the strongest start. We started listening to the audiobook of Seven Steeples by Sara Baume on the drive back from an NYE weekend away, and got like 2 hours in and were like wait is there a plot?? Is this book going anywhere? We gave up for the rest of the drive but I am stubborn and made myself finish this one on my own after. And the answer to my question was no… there was no plot. There was no payoff. This book was so boring 🥲 a couple and their two dogs move to the Irish countryside and become reclusive and insular, losing touch completely with their old lives. It remains unclear to me why they choose to do this. This book describes their day to day, they’re year to year, over and over. Ever looming is the mountain nearby that they never bring themselves to climb. And that’s the book! If you like a lot of description, maybe you’d like this. But honestly I’m shocked that this is considered an “acclaimed novel” by anyone.

The thing is, I like quiet books. I like character driven novels, and novels where there isn’t a lot of plot. But this one did not work. I don’t think it had much to say. The writing was lovely at a sentence level, but overall there wasn’t enough going on. And the ending… just wasn’t for me.