The whole trouble with e-books

So I'm trying to read John Le Carré's A Delicate Truth on Kindle.

His writing is almost impeccable. I do question the consistency of the chap at the beginning, who is described as 'agile' and hikes up the mountain like a good 'un, also falling out with his mattress because it upsets his bad back. No, that would be two quite different backs in the same man. Editor should have questioned it.

But my problem is this. Here I am, 24% of the way through the book, so my Kindle tells me. At this point, Jay Crispin is moving prominently into the foreground of the story. Now, I know Jay Crispin was mentioned nearer the beginning, in connection with the chap with the two backs, whose name I've now forgotten, I only remember his alias was Paul Anderson.  But I can't remember now what rôle Jay Crispin had at that point in the story.

If I have a paper book, that's easy. Even in a complicated story written in sophisticatedly cryptic sentences oozing cleverness like this one is, I can keep a thumb in the page I'm on and riffle through until I find the original mention of Jay Crispin. And though I can't remember what was said about him, I'll remember how much of a wodge of pages into the book he wafted through, and find him quick enough, then flip back to the bit I'm on now. Simple.

But in a Kindle? Can you keep your thumb in the page? Is that what 'bookmarks' do? I suspect not, but I don't actually know. And it isn't easy to riffle through near the beginning. You just have to keep turning pages — of which there are many because I read with fairly big print. And not only that but if I do something electronically imprecise then I get thrown onto this or that page or start going in the wrong direction and it all becomes unbearably tedious.

So because I just can't be bothered trying to stumble around in the electronic darkness trying to locate Jay Crispin by feel, I am just wandering on through the story resigning myself to bewilderment, and telling myself to be content at least to enjoy le Carré's excellent prose.

It's a bit like if I try to watch a tense political or crime drama on telly. I can only make out about a third of what the actors are saying to each other and have to rely on body language and the predictability of cultural convention to work out what's happening. As in, I have no idea what that man and woman just said to one another but she is sneering and he looks rebuffed; that'll have to be enough to go on. The man fires an angry remark at her, but as the camera is focused on the back of his head it could be anything. Hey-ho.

What worries me in A Delicate Truth is that eventually the man who isn't Paul Anderson is bound to resurface in the story, and whatever it was he knew about Jay Crispin — which I think should be illuminating my understanding of what's going on at the moment if only I hadn't forgotten it — will become of crucial importance.

I wish I'd bought a paperback.