Monday Mastery

>> Sunday, June 12, 2011

I often come across fabulous prose in my reading, prose I often wish I could share.

Here is a piece from Tana French's IN THE WOODS describing summer:

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pur silkscreen blue. This summer expodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping-chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling amonth the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.

Poinant. High concept. Visceral.

3 comments:

Anonymous,  4:22 AM  

Tana French has been on my TBR list for a while..I can see why you enjoy her books,,For me Ireland has always been such a mystical place..I am immersed in Jennifer McMahon's "Don't Breathe A Word",,I started with"Promise Not to Tell"..and just can't get enough of Jennifer's Books,Have a look..They might keep you up past your bedtime though...

Joan Swan 12:25 PM  

Hi Cozy,

My coworker just got back from Ireland and I poured over her photos. Gorgeous, gorgeous place.

I love Tana French's prose and though I'm having a hard time with the procedural detective part of it, her gorgeous use of words keeps me turning pages.

Babs 11:46 PM  

OMG! I love love love Tana French's writing. The images and emotions she creates with her prose are so clear it makes me shiver. And she's so 'Irish' -- at least at seems that way to me after visiting Ireland and having had a couple long-term very good Irish friends. She captures the smallness of the country (I loved her quote about how undercover cops can only work a few cases before being pulled in to the office permanently because they are too easily recognized!) but all the vast history and feeling. Gah! I'll stop waxing now...

IN THE WOODS was great and THE LIKENESS was even better. I honestly didn't enjoy FAITHFUL PLACE (the third in the loosely connected trilogy) as much...

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