You devour fast fiction as you do fast food. You savor slow fiction like you linger over an old-fashioned Sunday dinner with family and friends.

In her book, God’s Hotel, Victoria Sweet writes of “slow medicine,” medicine that allows a health professional time to listen to a sick patient and to observe. Such practices lend themselves to chronic illnesses and to patients diagnosed with multiple conditions.

Cooks create slow food for leisurely eating, usually for enjoying in community with others.

Slow fiction, in the sense of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead or Ann Patchett’s Run, is best read slowly, time taken to consider the characters, their victories and defeats, and perhaps impart meaning to our own lives.

We need fast medicine when an emergency or an easily diagnosed condition arises: A broken leg requires definite and rapid action. Antibiotics heal certain infections in days. A heart attack calls for immediate measures to stabilize the patient.

A half-hour lunch means a quick meal, not necessarily an unhealthy meal. Apple slices with tuna and cottage cheese can be prepared in minutes.

Fast fiction is fiction whose world we enter immediately when we want escape from a period of tedium and boredom or to relax after a busy day.

I gravitate now toward slow fiction, both as a reader and as a writer. I’m less interested in fiction that sews up all the problems into a neat garment. I prefer fiction that “amounts to something.” This fiction gives hope through personal friendship, restored community, and joy dependent on character rather than outward attainments or answering all the questions.