My wife put down my Kindle and looked at me, clearly trying to think of what words to use.

“Just tell me,” I said.

“The side plot between these characters is a much more interesting story than the main character.”

I took a deep breath and looked out the window at the road ahead of us, going on endlessly in a straight line, walled on both sides by empty cornfields that hadn’t started growing yet.

“It’s a problem,” she said.

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to tell her that somehow she’d read the...