All authors write some novels that are better than others, but occasionally there’s an unusually large gap in quality between a specific author’s books.

(At least in my opinion; a book I dislike might of course be liked by others, and vice versa. 🙂 )

I thought about this when recently reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ 2011 novel The Marriage Plot until giving up on it after about 100 pages. I loved that author’s 2002 novel Middlesex – which I thought was a brilliant look at a gender-confused character, the immigration experience, and more. It deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize.

The Marriage Plot? Almost plot-less as well as boring – and filled with spoiled, whiny, unlikable, pretentious, annoying characters at an Ivy League university. One Amazon reviewer drolly and accurately described these fictional collegians as “self-absorbed, over-educated noodles with cartoon parents.” Also, through his characters, Eugenides did way too much name-dropping of authors and books to beat us over the head with how well-read he was.

In short, I found the gap between those two novels astonishing – though, as I said before, others might feel differently.

Other huge gaps I’ve found in books by the same author? The first example that came to mind was between Jack London’s A Daughter of the Snows (1902) and London’s The Call of the Wild (1903). In the first novel, I admired London’s attempt to create a strong female protagonist, but the writing in general and the dialogue in particular were laughably clunky. Then, a year after that amateurish effort, came a stone-cold classic that couldn’t have been written better. Here was a case, also seen with some other authors, of a young author struggling to find writing confidence and a distinct writing voice before those both kick in – which can happen gradually or, as with London, seemingly overnight.

Large quality gaps between an author’s books can also have a late-career element. For instance, the chasm between Willa Cather’s exquisitely written My Antonia (1918) or Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and her abysmal Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) is stunning. Something like that can be caused by factors such as ill health or running out of ideas after penning many novels.

I also noticed this late-career phenomenon with Martin Cruz Smith: his Gorky Park (1981) and its first seven sequels are excellent, but eighth sequel The Siberian Dilemma (2019) is…ugh. It didn’t help that the author was dealing with advanced Parkinson’s disease at that point. 

And with Jack Finney: Time and Again (1970) is a riveting time-travel classic, but its sequel From Time to Time (1995) is pretty bad. Perhaps not a coincidence that Finney was in his mid-80s in 1995 and died that same year.

Of course, other reasons for a great author writing a bad book – say, in mid-career – could include a temporary health crisis, other challenging stuff going on in her or his life, having to rush a book for some reason, etc. Or sometimes a dud happens inexplicably; authors are human like everyone else. (So I’m told.)

Staying with a novel and a sequel, Kristin Hannah released the terrific Firefly Lane – about two very different friends – in 2008. Then came the 2013 follow-up Fly Away, which I found to be a yawn (though not awful). I’ve read 17 novels by Hannah – one of my favorite contemporary authors — and Fly Away is the only one I didn’t love. (My very favorites of hers are the most recently published four: The Women, The Four Winds, The Great Alone, and The Nightingale.)

And Darryl Brock came out with the fabulous, should-be-better-known baseball/time-travel novel If I Never Come Back in 1990. Twelve years later, his Two in the Field sequel was a near-dud.

Going back to the 19^th-century, Wilkie Collins wrote lengthy superb novels such as 1860’s The Woman in White. One rare Collins misstep was A Rogue’s Life, which I struggled to get through despite it being short. But I did finish it, unlike The Marriage Plot. 🙂

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “This is fan fact, not fan fiction. It’s hot in August.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about a tone-deaf hire and a long-overdue audit — is here.