What’s the worst book by a good writer you’ve ever read?

Or books? I’ve got two in mind, both so bad I can’t get them out of my mind: Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings and Evelyn Waugh’s The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. I like both writers and had high expectations for both titles, which of course makes my disappointment even worse.

Ancient Evenings was published in 1983 and it was highly hyped as Mailer’s return to the novel after an absence of nearly 20 years. Well, based on this densely imagined recreation of Rameses, Nefertiti and life in Egypt’s 18^th Dynasty, he should’ve stayed away. For every page of truly brilliant writing, there are 20 pages of the worst dreck imaginable—mawkish, embarrassing, numbing. So numbing you might lose consciousness. It’s the literary equivalent of getting hit in the head with a brick.

Years of drinking and drugging finally caught up to Waugh in 1954, when he suffered a bizarre mental breakdown marked by paranoid hallucinations and the belief that he was possessed by devils. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) is his semi-fictionalized account of the experience. It’s a fascinating premise, and I picked it up hoping I’d get a Waughesque version of William Styron’s Darkness Visible. It’s more like listening to a drunken friend tell you about the dream he had last night. Pinfold is repetitious, unstructured and rhythmless—and then this happened and this happened and this happened—written with one-dimensional humor and zero-dimensional insight or analysis. For a relatively short book (232 pages in paperback), it goes on forever and ever and ever.

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Permalink Reply by Marian Perera on May 7, 2011 at 8:54pm

I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan but I couldn't finish Passenger to Frankfurt. Christie was brilliant at constructing mystery plots, but not so good at a suspense/thriller or whatever that book is supposed to be.

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Permalink Reply by Kristine Lowder on May 7, 2011 at 10:00pm

The Longest Trip Home - John Grogan. Very sub-par following Marley and Me.

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Permalink Reply by Christine Amsden on May 9, 2011 at 8:13am

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

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Permalink Reply by Frank Zubek on May 9, 2011 at 8:22am

Under the Dome bu Stephen King

Very poor ending

Very much a waste of my time once I arrived there

I'm not saying I am as a good a writer as he is but I believe I would have written a better, more satisfying ending

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Maxwell on May 9, 2011 at 11:56am

Orfe by Cynthia Voigt!

She wrote the wonderful Homecoming and Dicey's Song. Then, she writes this novel of despair and darkness where the female protagonist projectile vomits at will. Give me a break!!!

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Permalink Reply by Sharon Dwyer on May 9, 2011 at 1:40pm

The last four by Patricia Cornwell. Very depressing - everyone is unhappy and crying the blues every other sentence. Could not finished the last one out. Got tired of the negative feelings from every character.

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Permalink Reply by KJ Kron on May 9, 2011 at 3:09pm

There's a lot of books that let me down. On I particularly remember hating was Gerald's Game by Stephen King - although there were others I didn't like by him. I haven't read him in some time now. The same thing started to happen when I read Ken Follet and Anne Rice. I'm not sure if they got worse or my tastes changed.

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Maxwell on May 9, 2011 at 7:48pm

The change in tastes is an interesting factor! I have noticed that many big name authors tried to outdo themselves as their careers went on and that caused a decrease it their appeal...at least for me. Those that come to mind are: Robin Cook, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Crichton.

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Permalink Reply by shelly blomker on May 12, 2011 at 1:16am

I have to agree that big time authors have a habit of writing good in the beginning and then seem to run out of ideas and they are still published. I stopped reading Stephen King after the tommyknockers which I thought was the worst novel I've ever read so far.