Maybe twenty years ago, when I was in middle age, I had a "Run for Your Life" conversion. Out with the bullshit in my life, I had a lot of catching up to do. So much catching up, so little time. So I gave up TV, cut out, and then let back in but still cut way back, on sports, started reading only serious books. I had had exasperated experiences with contemporary fiction even before, and so chose only classics. Sometimes that didn't work. I have three or four or five versions of The Odyssey, the complete works of Shakespeare, two editions of The Pilgrim's Progress. They didn't take. I was never trained to read poetry and couldn't train myself. I read the classic fiction voraciously and I did take to that. With one exception. I picked up The Count of Monte Cristo. I had my daughter, then a little girl, staying with me for half of the time then and she still laughs when she remembers, "Oh my God," "Oh, this is TERRIBLE!" coming from the other room.

This is by way of explanation. I am now 65 years old. I have far less time left than I did when I read The Count of Monte Cristo and abhor even more wasting my time on dreck. Thus my reaction to page 562 of Kristin Labransdatter was entirely genuine and, I more than half think, warranted. I felt fooled by Sigrid Undset. What I thought were little markers, that turned out to be cul de sacs, were cul de sacs and were deliberate by Miss Undset. They were meaningfully meaningless. I don't know if I will finish the book now. I don't want to throw good time after bad.