For the first 100 hundred pages of Jack London’s “must-read” (according to the Guardian, and seconded, implicitly, by its inclusion in Wendy Lesser’s list of 100 books to read for pleasure) novel, I could not figure out why Martin Eden has aroused such ardent support. It seemed, by turns, clumsily-written, painfully repetitious, and generally juvenile in its absorption with the budding intellectual life and Horatio Alger-like strivings of the book’s eponymous protagonist, as prompted and spurred on by his school boy obsession with Ruth, the cloistered and high-minded sister of Martin’s well-heeled friend.
But, at some subtly indefinable point, Martin’s love for Ruth comes to seem less the moonings of a credulous young man confusing something inattainable with the true source of his desires, and more the genuine story of two people falling in love. At nearly the same time, London’s writing also takes hold of the reader, and begins to show the sensitivity and complexity of a real novel, rather than the simplicity of a Harlequin romance.
Feeling that we are in the hands of a capable writer, it is easier now to drop our cynicism about the naivete of these two young lovers, and to feel genuinely moved when, two pages on from the above discription, they, for the first time, kiss.