Some fiction is written in lush, rococo prose. Details crowd together and the story swells into a clotted mass of sensation. It could be an approximation of how we usually experience life. At any one moment there are dozens of details that pile together to shape our experience of that minute, those seconds, this splinter of awareness. The more detail an author can provide, the closer we can come to living in their story. Without description you have a sparse summary of events, a newspaper article. Or maybe you have something worse - Passage to Zerahemla, for instance. We already know we're never going there again.
Ever is another species of literary animal. There is no layering of detail, and yet neither is it dry fact presentation. Rather, Levine demonstrates the discerning use of detail. She crafts brief and simple sentences, offers frugal descriptions, and somehow creates a world all the more vivid for its few colours. For extra kick, Levine laces her story with wry humour. This novel is an example of story telling done well. I very much liked this one.
A sample:
"I see Puru's fingers for the first time. The god of destiny bites his fingernails."
No comments:
Post a Comment