Seven months. That is how long it took me to complete Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown. Seven months of my life that could have been spent making a dent in my bookshelf reading list. But no. Instead they were spent on the stories of India, Boonyi, Max, Shalimar and Kashmira (who is in fact India, but with her name changed.)

I have heard good things about Rushdie, have read bits and pieces of Midnight's Children and thoroughly enjoyed them. So why was it that I struggled so much through Shalimar the Clown? I started reading the book on my first weekend in Korea after flying through A Thousand Splendid Suns and Recipes for a Perfect Marriage. I had saved Rushdie as a treat for myself, expecting to delve into it and devour it in much the same way as I had with the other books. But reading Rushdie would be more of an accomplishment than the others. It would be a culmination in my desire to read more intellectually, to achieve the standard of reading that I felt my degree in English afforded me.

I opened the book and fell asleep about eight pages in. Tiredness. I shrugged off the fact as though it meant nothing. So what if I was tired and couldn't concentrate. That said nothing about the book and everything about myself, my personality, my habits. I tried again when I awoke, and pushed on through my tiredness to the end of India's story. By this point, I had napped. I wasn't tired when I started, but after reading twenty four pages, I was exhausted. His words had drained the energy out of me. I wanted to know more, but I couldn't be bothered to read and find out. I threw the book onto the bookshelf and didn't look at it again until, three books later, I was desperate for something to read.

My resilience was back. I wouldn't open another book until I finished this one. My reading list steadily grew, my bookshelf groaning under the weight of unread masterpieces, but I ignored the sound and struggled on. There were moments when I was entranced, when I didn't want to put the book down for fear of losing my enthusiasm once again, but those moments were few and far between, and as I pushed past the story of Boonyi and her betrayal, as I sympathised with Max and his naivety, as I battled with Shalimar and his pride and sense of revenge and finally came to Kashmira and her grief, I found myself not relating to them as I normally would, but separating myself from them, viewing them as entities that I couldn't understand, had no relation to. For the first time in a long time, I saw them as purely fictional characters with no relevance in the real world. I am sure that their stories stem from truth, but I couldn't attach myself to their stories. Though the tale that Rushdie told was an intriguing one, of that there can be no doubt, the way in which he told it led me to being absolutely bored to the verge of tears.

Forty pages from the end of the book, I made a deal with myself. If I could finish the book in one sitting, I would give myself some form of reward, be it in a new book or some sweet treat. I sat down on my bed and read. And read. And read. I read for at least an hour, trying to push past my boredom and the desire to throw the book across the room. I read until the last page, the last sentence and then I stared at it. Was this it? There was no sense of accomplishment, no sense of resolve, no sense of anything but bitterness at having the last seven months of my life taken from me. They stood and faced each other, each about to kill the other, and then it was over. You never find out what happens to Shalimar, whose story you have been following from the beginning, because even as you are reading the stories of the other characters, Shalimar is moving in the back of your mind and you find yourself wondering how this person is important to Shalimar, how his or her actions will affect the murder that he commits within the first few pages of the novel. And then it is over. With no warning, no finality, no grand ending. It just finishes. Rushdie writes a final sentence and feels that the novel is over, but I am left with a sense of wondering what the hell happened!

I don't want a sequel. God no. For the first time in this whole miserable book I want to know what happens next, and it is denied to me. I gave into my desire and threw the book across the room. It was finished. I would put it behind me and bury it in amongst a myriad of better books, hopefully one or two by Rushdie himself. But the feeling of disappointment cannot be taken from me. I pushed through it, but I came out at the end bitter and broken and filled with hatred. That was a first.