Blocked

When I started Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer last Saturday, his follow-up to The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, one of my favourite reads of last year, I thought I'd race through it in a couple of days. Almost a week later and I'm only just over halfway through. In the middle of the week I got to the section about Paula visiting the home of her son John Paul, a recovering heroin addict, followed by her succumbing to some kind of brief illness, and I just lost my way. I read the same page something like five times without it cohering for me. I briefly considered putting the book to one side but to give up on a text I'd looked forward to reading, and initially enjoyed, seemed ridiculous.

I should say that this was tied in with a sense of being a bit out of sorts, not quite tickety-boo, that descended on me in the middle of the week. It was like being on the edge of an actual illness, but never really getting there and it seemed to colour my reading of the novel.

I suppose this is a reminder of sorts of what a physical experience the reading of a novel can be.