I'm ashamed and embarrassed to admit it, but this is the second book in three years which I did not finish. Or could not. 
 Let me indulge in a bit of a heartfelt monologue of what I'm passionate about, but not hopefully not in an impish boast. Reading isn't a chore for me, it really isn't. Even if it's assigned reading for class or an impossibly thick pomo thing with multilingual historical references or a thousand page history of some obscure topic. On the contrary. I enjoy those. I savor those sorts of things. I seek them out. I feel bad if my reading isn't tough enough. 
 So what made me stop reading The Instructions? 
 The choice of subject material is not uninteresting, and is in fact, wildly original. The idea of a Messianic Jewish Che rising up in adolescent rebellion against his Schloss of a school is a delicious idea. I was first drawn in with his monologues, his scriptures, his war plans, and the dialogue with his father about faith and mysticism and the Sefirot. These early bits were fascinating. 
 But there's a long stretch between our narrator and his Masada. I was unwilling or unable to make the long journey. 
 After the first two hundred pages, however, the book become slowly more painful to read, and the time stretched relativistic, as if the mass of the book had become a black hole and it was distorting gravity and space-time and it was affecting my consciousness. Neither the kids nor their dialogue grabbed my attention. I dimly recalled the annoying petulant bratty man-children of Jonathan Safran Foer. 
 The second problem is that the book is over a thousand pages wrong, it does not contain a thousand pages of material. 
 This book is compared to DFW's because of its sheer size. However, DFW wrote something of interest or of thought or of sheer beauty of language on every page, and his efficiency of words is unparalleled -- a strange thing to write for an author whose reputation was for the verbose. 
 Even though something was indeed printed on those pages, nothing had crossed the barrier between page and brain. Not description, not action, not dialogue, just space, where nothing was impressed onto my memory. 
 Now this is only my opinion, unburdened with anything like an objective fact or assertion. It only reflects my subjective isolate experience. Many other people could enjoy this by finding some connection I have missed. If there is something there, please tell me. It is easy to criticize and make book reviews, far easier than to write. If people are dissuaded from the task of writing big encyclopedic novels based on the opinions of mere critics, may Adonai save us.