Grab the Lapels

The West Passage by Jared Pechaček

Recently, Bill @ The Australian Legend replied to a comment I left on his blog about our different reading preferences. Bill wrote, “You and I differ I think because my preference with novels is of course the writing itself, but also how the main character develops and interacts over the course of the novel, even if they are doing nothing; whereas I would say that you prefer a strong narrative to carry the character development along.” I’ve been thinking about this, especially as I started reading a book called The West Passage by Jared Pechaček for Bill’s blog.

Unfortunately, I have a history of not finishing novels Bill recommends, but not for lack of trying. Often, it’s the writing style I just can’t get into. The same happened with The West Passage. To help me along, I asked my mom, fondly known as Biscuit on my blog, to read with me and have one of our book club meetings about Pechaček’s novel. When I started struggling mightily, around page 55, I texted to ask how far she was. At the time, Biscuit was 200 pages ahead of me! She reassured me that the novel picked up around page 100. Yikes. Something she mentioned to help me along is that she had to let go of the idea that Pechaček would describe anything to satisfaction, as in neither of us could really picture anything in this world—which is odd because it seems that was the whole draw of the novel.

Several towers (I think 5-6) are described by color, such as the Grey Tower. The novel opens with the Grey Tower’s guardian of the west passage growing cold upon her death. The women in grey take her up to the top of the tower, so she can be eaten by crows. The job of the grey women is to usher folks in birth and death. The focus is on a young girl—not sure how young “young” is—who is learning under the women in grey. The second main character is the apprentice to the recently deceased guardian of the west passage. Oddly, he thinks he’s been denied his opportunity as guardian, but all the women in grey keep saying he just needed to speak up and tell them he was ready?? Could it be that the entire premise of the novel—that a beast will rise up and get to this fabled land of towers via the west passage—was because some teenage boy didn’t speak up? I don’t know.

Again, the style wasn’t jiving with me, and I almost felt like I had lost the ability to read fluently. What I realized later, and in consideration of Bill’s comment above, is that the book didn’t have a human heart beating behind it. None of the characters felt like people, and the plot didn’t create any emotional response. It was more like someone showing me a blurry photo album and vaguely describing each picture to me. I ended up deciding to stop on page 79, which means I definitely gave it a good shot! I don’t mind if characters do nothing, but I want to get to know the character. In the case of Pechaček, I’m not even sure if the two main characters were human, as so many others were described with feathers, fur, and gender non-specific pronouns. Never does a character or narrator mention non-binary or sexuality of any kind, really, but many individuals were “they” (perhaps because they were actually animals??).

Biscuit did finish, but she said I wasn’t missing much. You might enjoy The West Passage if you were a fan of video games from the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo, as it reads like the characters are traversing levels without gaining character.

Books of Fall 🍂🎃🍵

  • Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  • Just Desserts by G.A. McKevett
  • Slewfoot by Brom
  • She Throws Herself Forward to Stop the Fall by Dave Newman
  • Submerged by Hillel Levin
  • The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson
  • Homing by Sherrie Flick (DNF)
  • The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (DNF)
  • Ask Elizabeth: Real Answers to Everything You Secretly Wanted to Ask about Love, Friends, Your Body — and Life in General by Elizabeth Berkley (DNF)
  • No Good Deed by Allison Brennan (#10)
  • Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann
  • The West Passage by Jared Pechaček (DNF)
  • Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
  • Quest for the Unknown: Bizarre Phenomena by Reader’s Digest
  • Icebreaker by Hannah Grace
  • A Life in Letters by Zora Neale Hurston
  • Bitter Thirst by S.M. Reine (Preternatural Affairs #8)
  • Deaf Eyes on Interpreting, edited by Thomas H. Holcomb and David H. Smith
  • Compassion, Michigan by Raymond Luczak
  • Syd Arthur by Ellen Frankel

21 comments

  1. For the second day in a row WP has rejected me and lost my comment. This time they made me reset my password, from something I could remember to something I’ll never remember.

    Thanks for reading this and for writing up your experience. It was one of the books shortlisted for the Ursula K le Guin Prize 2025. Marcie at Buried in Print and I read some of the others (I’ll provide links later, in another comment, when I get to my desktop). It seems to us the judges are going for experimental, though the shortlists always contain some good, straight SF as well.

    And well done Biscuit for making it through to the end.

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  2. Every once in a while I’ve read a book that doesn’t get good until after the first hundred pages. One of them turned out to be a favorite of mine, so I always give books that first hundred pages, hoping. But it sounds like your mom finishing the book tells you everything you needed to know about putting it down, in this case!

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  4. First of all, Bill’s observations of your reading style are spot on, because I think I feel the same way about my reading style! I could already tell I wouldn’t like this book just based on your description. Not because it’s not worthwhile, but because I can just tell it isn’t for me. Especially when reading any type of fantasy book, I need to be able to picture it in my mind…

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  5. I remember reading that comment of Bill’s. I think – and you won’t be surprised – that my reading preferences align more with Bill’s (though we are not the same at all as you will know). I love good characters, but they don’t have to be full rounded. I’m thinking of the book I hope to publish my post on this week, Colum McCann’s Twist. I’m writing in my post a bit about how reader’s likes affect their responses to a book – duh! This character thing is part of it. Some in the group didn’t really like the book because a couple of the characters are “shadowy”. I had already felt that but I think they are mainly carriers for ideas. And the story is told from the perspective of one character who really can’t know them well anyhow. So, I loved the book for the ideas, for his great writing, and I did find the characters interesting.

    I love that you asked Biscuit to read it with you and that she finished. Good on you though for being prepared to give up rather than read something you really wren’t enjoying.

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  6. Huh, this does sound tricky to get into. Did Biscuit say whether it ever had a character come forward that the reader could care about? World building and setting is all well and good but, I agree, there has to be some heart behind it!

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