I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, partly to take a break from the looming election. Something that I've come to realize is that it can take awhile to feel comfortable with a novel's cast of characters and the author's writing style. The most basic problem is sorting out who's who. I think it is a mistake for novelists to introduce a group of characters too quickly; this involves a lot of tedious paging back and forth when I fail to recall whether X is the brother, the uncle, or Z's husband. I prefer to meet these people one or two at a time, the way I would in real life. I want to see what the author does with them, how she describes their interior lives and how she manages to give each of them a different way of speaking.
In fiction, I look for freshly minted observations of the way people think and behave and a sense that the author has created a unique world with parallels to the one I inhabit. Whenever I encounter generic descriptions, unbelievable dialogue, or trendy writerly mannerisms, I don't bother reading further. Conversely, after finishing an outstanding novel, my expectations become more demanding. Recently, when I turned from the Irish novelist Sally Rooney's brilliant Intermezzo to two recent and much-praised novels by leading American women writers, they seemed disappointingly humdrum and sentimental. American readers are famous for preferring stories with a therapeutic upbeat resolution and for condemning deeply tragic narratives as "too sad." Yet a tragic sense of life is perhaps the most important characteristic of great writers.