Four disappointing books I read in 2012

Last year I posted about the most disappointing books I'd read, but most of the books I read this year were quite good, and the few that weren't had some redeeming qualities, so this year's list may be more about me and my reading preferences and less a true catalog of the year's biggest losers. Readers of this blog will know that I read (or at least started) several books by debut novelists in 2011, and none blew me away - but I'll put those novels aside: they're only disappointing relative to your expectations, you can't really expect a young novelist to rise to the level of some of the greats I read this year - Tolstoy, Cervantes, William Trevor. Maybe they'll get there. But there were a few books that disappointed me this year, for various reasons, so here's my look at four disappointing books I read in 2011:

Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Okay, it's beautifully written at times, and the story of Scott and Zelda is powerful and romantic and tragic, but is this novel really any good? I found it very hard to care about the characters or believe in them - they drink, they fight, they act like spoiled rich kids, it may have been shocking and moving to read this novel - 70 years ago - but I found it tedious and unlikable. Dick Diver is supposed to be one of the world's leading analysts, but nothing in the novel makes us believe he's any more than a drunk - the only "analytic" work we see him do at all is fall in love with a young, vulnerable patient.

The Accident, by Ismail Kadare. I did like his collection of novellas, Agamemnon's Daughter, and I give this Albanian expatriate great credit for his bravery in writing from exile about a horribly cruel regime, but this short novel - about a taxi crash and the relations among the people in the vehicle - starts off well but then goes nowhere, endless existential drivel and never coming to a point. The plight of the European intellectual? Who cares?

The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil. Jeffrey Eugenides, discussing 1980s student bookshelves, amusingly refers to the "point-scoring Robert Musil" - even more so today with the beautiful 2-volume edition. I want to read it. I've tried! More than once! And though it starts off as if it will be a great, monumental novel about the decline and corruption of an early-20th century European kingdom (Austria?), after several hundred pages I find myself completely lost, just waiting for the characters to take shape and to do something. I guess the title should have been a warning. This one, for me, goes down with Finnegans Wake and Gravity's Rainbow: I'm sure they're great, if you persevere, but I don't have a lifetime to do so.

The Poorhouse Fair, by John Updike. Readers of this blog will know that Updike for me is one of the great writers of the century, especially his 4.5 Rabbit novels and every story he ever wrote. I've read almost all of his fiction from the past 20 years but haven't read all the early works, so this year I went back to this novel, his first. Essentially, it's amazingly good as a first novel and a very unconventional theme and setting (a home for the elderly) for a young novelist, and the sex and profanity must have been bold in 1950, but ultimately I was only interested in the book as a window through which to view the author Updike would become. The novel itself seems really dated and not all that compelling.

Let's hope for no disappointments in 2012!