There are people one meets who are relentlessly introspective. Of course, that’s not a problem until they feel the need to share the findings of that introspection at great length and in great detail. Then my patience wears thin. What is true for me in life is true also for me in fiction.

Anne Serre’s novel The Beginners is less about Anna Lore’s chance encounter with Thomas Lenz than the coup de foudre that follows. Lives are shaken and old alliances cracked. What follows is close to two hundred pages devoted to Anna’s emotional response. It’s courageous to create a narrator as difficult to like as Anna. But maybe the author finds her fascinating and admirable, I found her inexhaustible self-regard irritating. After a powerful opening to the novel, what followed quickly bored me.