I almost never abandon novels before finishing them. I can’t remember the last time I did. It isn’t a matter of stubbornness.  I tend to choose books that have been recommended by friends or by reviewers and that generally has the effect of weeding out things I’m likely to end up hating. But then I bought Julie Orringer’s latest novel, The Flight Portfolio.

The signs were so positive.  A glowing review in The New York Times and a recommendation from a friend who knows me well and whose taste in novels I trust.  So, why did I dislike The Flight Portfolio so much, to the extent that I had to abandon it because every day felt like a miserable slog? Three reasons. First, the writing is often clunky, clichéd, and over-elaborate.  The author simply can’t resist extraneous adjectives and adverbs and inevitably chooses the most obvious ones. Second, the novel is far too long.  Cutting by a third would have improved it. Third, such a promising plot (the true-life extraction from Occupied France of artists, writers, and intellectuals threatened by the Nazis) was almost suffocated by a silly, romantic sub-plot. What do these mistakes have in common? A bugbear of mine: insufficient editing.  Far too many literary novels in my experience are being published without any obvious editing (or with an obvious lack of editing). The Flight Portfolio could have been so much better with judicious, expert editing.  Without it, it ended up bland, uninspiring, and slightly pretentious.