Reading mediocre books is like being around toxic people. They are never too bad to be dropped straight away. By the time you realise they will never change, you already have lost too much time and energy.

That’s what happened when I was reading A River or Stars by Vanessa Hua. The book is not that bad. It actually introduced me to more aspects of a culture than it probably intended to. I don’t mean straightforward information like the facts about the life of Chinese people in rural areas, or the fact that Chinese people born in rural areas are not allowed to work or study in the cities (is it really so?!) There are other, more subtle cultural aspects noticeable in the book. For example, a man is still considered a good father figure even though he calls his previous children by ordinal numbers. He doesn’t care enough to refer to them by names because they are female.

A River of Stars promised to be way more dynamic than it actually was. Pregnant women on a run in a foreign country sounded like a story with possible adventures. The adventures never happened. The book does start with several fast-paced events but it soon falls apart into many irrelevant flashbacks from different characters which, while exposing the characters, still leave them looking flat and underdeveloped, probably because the characters themselves rarely do anything. They float around the book like oil stains on water, flashing their memories and tweaking their existence until everything arrives to a culmination that would have happened anyway even if they had remained absolutely still. One character’s life is parallel to the plot. The character is not really knitted into the plot but not dropped from it either. Another character’s behavior puzzles both readers and characters but is never explained.

The writing is decent. The sentences don’t look like written by a graduate from ‘How to be a popular writer’ course. The style is genuine and flowing. The phrases are nicely built. They just don’t have a structure to convey. There are tons of details and descriptions scattered across the book but they never play any role. They are sort of Chekhov’s guns gone wrong. The events with a potential to some salience are described distantly and monotonously as if the author herself is bored with telling them. The backward, flashback-based storytelling makes the book sound like those long detailed monologues of people who you can’t escape from because of some social situation. As soon as you allow yourself to skip a paragraph, it turns out you missed some important information, so you have to return and go through the boring part again.

I wouldn’t suggest A River of Stars to anybody. Even though it’s not a bad book, it still takes time that could be spent on a really good one.

On Chesil Beach is a beautifully written eventless novella where graphic sex scenes are an essential part of the story. The writing style reminds me of those old classics created at times when authors didn’t care if they could interest the reader. They just immersed themselves in the process and those who were literate enough would read the result anyway. It’s a high quality writing but you have to exercise self-control to drag yourself through it because nothing at all is happening.

On Chesil Beach looks like a well prepared stage where action is about to take place. Then, suddenly, you hit the final page. All story could fit in 177 words.

The book was selected for 2007 Booker Prize shortlist which caused a few scandals because it’s not even a novel by size.

Another curious story happened when Ian McEwan mentioned that he kept two pebbles from Chesil beach while writing the book. It caused one more scandal. McEwan was threatened with a fine and had to apologise and return the pebbles back to the beach.

There’s now a movie adaptation of the story released in May 2018. Judging by the trailer, the characters look nothing like the ones described in the book. Unless the storyline was changed too I can’t even imagine what there was to film at all.

You will still like On Chesil Beach if you enjoy looking deeply into characters and dissecting their emotions, and if you don’t mind the complete absence of action.