Group Read, March 2022: New Grub Street

Our March group read is New Grub Street by George Gissing. Please join in the read and post any comments on this thread.

I'm finding this an annoying book so far. You have to really, really care about the production and marketing mechanisms of Victorian literature. Also, the main character -- Jasper -- is a horrible person. Truly unbearable. I don't care much for his soggy friend or the friend's not-very-long-suffering wife, either.

But I am a mere 70 pages and and expect that things may improve. Is anybody else reading? Don't let me put you off!

hmm
I decided to read a different group read of a Victorian novel first (The Perpetual Curate by Margaret Oliphant - not a list book). I would like to give New Grub Street a try because I've never read Gissing and generally like Victorian novels. I will probably still try it, despite your reaction, but might not get to it in March.

So I read a bunch of reviews and tried to figure out why people liked this book so much, and having done that, I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. And I can kind of see what's good about it. The main character is a horrible person but his self-consciousness about that is interesting. It doesn't redeem him, but it's interesting, especially since all the other horrible people in the book lack that self-consciousness. There is really only one decent, sympathetic person in the whole cast of characters, and I feel they are doomed.

Anybody else reading?