Novels that could be short stories

Have you ever felt a novel going on and on for too long? Can’t stand the irrelevant developments but feel compelled to finish because you want to know what happens in the end? Felt like if a few parts were snipped here and there, it could make better reading? The Week has compiled a list of some such novels that could do with a little bit of editing, in our opinion.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

After Jhumpa Laihiri wowed the reading world with her collection of short stories, her first novel was eagerly anticipated. There is no doubt about Lahiri’s writing skills, whether in long form or short, but perhaps she is a tad more skillful in the short form. Because at the end, the point of her novel is contained in the first few chapters and the very last one, and even if you skipped everything that happened in between, you would not miss much. And add to it the fact that this novel was initially a novella, and was developed into a longer work after positive responses, and you start wondering why Lahiri did not stick to the shorter form!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road has been hailed by many groups of experts, writers, environmental scientists, and philosophers for a realistic portrayal of a post-apocalyptic world. McCarthy has described vividly the horrors of a world without resources, where evil does not seem bad any more, and where a person can do anything to survive. How a father struggles to shield his son from these horrors forms the core of the story. But the problem is that it does not have much of a plot. Conversations between the father and his young son repeat the same theme of barrenness and hopelessness over and over again, and sometimes even the same phrases. The work would probably have been crisper and even more effective if it was shorter.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

This is the third part of the Hunger Games trilogy, with the first and second parts being Hunger Games and Catching Fire. After a thrilling start and a mediocre transition, the Hunger Games Trilogy ends with a whine. Many readers have complained of how they found it hard to follow the story as it meandered and got stuck in irrelevant details. There are pages and pages of descriptions about wars, unfamiliar places, scientific terms the writer made up on the spot to complicate the story (or so it seems), and you wonder if it could not be told more concisely. Gathering just the important turning points of this novel would make a fine short story or novella.

As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer

This is the story of a young boy, son of a wheelbarrow hawker, who goes on to create a retail empire. In contrast to the title, Archer wanders hundreds of (symbolic) miles away from the story, detailing the ups and downs of supporting characters’ lives. It is all quite riveting, but as you get towards the end, one by one all but the central characters fade away from the story, making you wonder why you wasted so much time and emotions on characters that do not matter. The entire book is just a prelude to the denouement, and preludes should be much shorter than 400 plus pages, we believe. Archer should have taken the book’s title more literally and gotten straight to the point.

Land Where I Flee by Prajwal Parajuli

Like The Namesake, Land Where I Flee is the first attempt at long fiction by an author whose short stories had been acclaimed. And like Lahiri, this is another writer who expresses better in short form. This book tells the story of a wealthy grandmother and her varied brood, each of whom has their own closet full of skeletons. But then, the sketchy development of these characters is more suited to short stories than a novel, and the resolution, when it comes, is not as satisfying as you would expect after reading so many pages. The story of the grandmother, which forms the core of the novel, could have been told much more succinctly in short form.

Summer Love by Subin Bhattarai

Bhattarai, though a successful short story crafter, could not carry the momentum in his first novel. Young love is sweet, and you want it to go on and on. But if the love is not yours, you don’t want it to go on for ever, as it does in the book. After the first twenty pages, basically nothing much happens except graphic descriptions of many, many dates the protagonists go to, the circumstances in which they happen, and the details of how they manage to hide it from their families. Finally, there is a twist in the last twenty pages, but it is again interspersed with monologues that do nothing to further the story. Pruning it all away would leave only a story, shorter but more readable.

Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer

There are many many versions of the Twilight Saga written by its detractors, and all of them are much shorter than the original books. For example, here is a synopsis of the second book New Moon: “Edward goes away from Bella’s life. Bella is sad. Edward comes back.” And when you think about it, there is nothing else that you can take away from the book. Similarly, each of the four books in the series can be summarized in a paragraph at most, and the entire series can be condensed to a short story. If you can live with the hate mail from die-hard Twilight fans, that is.

All of Chetan Bhagat’s novels

Bhagat’s novels are full of wit and sparkle. But even sparkle starts to dim if you look at it too long, and that is exactly what happened to Bhagat’s work. Novel after novel is filled with the same plot, in the same setting, and populated by the same characters. The characters even have the same nuances, right up to the little gestures they make: the unattractive hero who gets the girl, the attractive girl who is a superwoman in disguise, and the Greek-God sidekick with hidden traumas. If each of these novels were condensed to a shorter form, maybe Bhagat could eliminate these repetitions. Alternately, Bhagat could stop treating his publisher like a book factory and space out his products.