A book that doesn’t want to help

There are books that offer you an exercise on page three. And there are books that simply put you in another kitchen, another city, another head. Afterwards you are not more efficient. You have only been somewhere else.

Last week it was one of those. No guide, no manifesto. A story in which men appear without anyone explaining what “men today” ought to do. You read, keep a finger in the page, get water, read on.

Effect without instructions

It is helpful only indirectly. You don’t bring a list out of books like that. You bring a sentence that sticks. Or a scene that returns on the bus the next day, without you needing to use it.

Next time you stand in a shop unsure: don’t take the book that promises you will be tidier afterwards. Take the one whose first page you turn because you want to know what happens. That is criterion enough.