Scott's The Abbot
12 Apr 2025 02:22 pmI know teenagers in reality are often foolish and prone to risky behavior and refusing to pay attention to guidance or instructions, but having always been extraordinarily cautious and timid, it's a quality I can't relate to and have difficulty even empathizing with.
Even a character who, like The Abbot's Roland Graeme, is 100% plausibly foolish, impulsive, violent, arrogant and daredevil — being 17 and spoiled by a horribly abusive combination of parental indulgence and neglect — is very difficult for me to read.
My patience with foolhardy risk-taking in narrative is very short before I start saying constantly, "This guy should have Darwin Awarded himself to death by now. Please let this one kill him. And on the plus side, if he died this time, I wouldn't have to read about any more of his infuriating decisions."
So the bad parenting retiring from the foreground has not made the book much more palatable so far.
Even a character who, like The Abbot's Roland Graeme, is 100% plausibly foolish, impulsive, violent, arrogant and daredevil — being 17 and spoiled by a horribly abusive combination of parental indulgence and neglect — is very difficult for me to read.
My patience with foolhardy risk-taking in narrative is very short before I start saying constantly, "This guy should have Darwin Awarded himself to death by now. Please let this one kill him. And on the plus side, if he died this time, I wouldn't have to read about any more of his infuriating decisions."
So the bad parenting retiring from the foreground has not made the book much more palatable so far.