Search options (Page 8 of 38)

Medieval Scotland is my heritage! I've traced back to Kilbirnie in the William Wallace days.

I'm on the last book in the Tolkien trilogy {The Return of the King} & have begun The Passing Bells by Phillip Rock. The latter is set on an English country estate just before the outbreak of the First World War. It's the start of a trilogy. I've only read the first hundred pages, but so far I'd recommend it to your mother. I remember you saying she loves Downton Abbey. This has a similar theme.

I might have to read the two in conjunction.

I like that Atwood doesn't depict a specific scene here. There's no actual exchange of dialogue, so the reader is permitted to imagine the scene elongated over weeks. She offers just enough -- I LOVE that detail of the arms stretching -- to imply what the reader can then assume is a prolonged period of silent communication, as a sistership is formed in hushed notes. Yet it passes in only a brief paragraph, like a memory. I believe that ability to say volumes in few words adds to the richness in this description, because it happens so swiftly yet says so much. And the detail! Specific names, listed off as if they're exchanged, or related, down the line of the beds. The detail of them lying sideways, watching each other's lips. All of that in a remarkably short space.

I'd say the same on this passage. "Old sex in the room." Oh my! SO MUCH is said in that single line. So much is described that needs no description. It's the perfect choice of words. Economy. I feel that I am IN that room with that single line. And the listing of the way the hands touch -- by listing it out, she separates each moment into its own scene, so you see them as a series of touches over a long period of time. She is again creating a sense of time passing, in only a few words. Each day is separated by a comma. "Or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh." The list builds to this LONG, LONG moment that is its own scene passing before you realize you read it. The hands are on them "in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot" -- these lines are brief and succinct. Then Atwood stops everything for "or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh." And it's as if you're holding your breath and that moment goes on forever.

It's as if she is describing the women as she describes the garden: "the daffodils are now fading and the tulips are opening their cups, spilling out colour. The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they have been cut and are beginning to heal there." For me that's a delicate, sexual, terrible description, because you want to find the flowers beautiful, but they belong to the commander's wife. I love that she gives us the image before she lets us know this garden is a prison, and the flowers are, like the women, owned. " Many of the Wives have such gardens, it's something for them to order and maintain and care for." And so the wives are imprisoned as well. A garden of enclosed people to own and admire.

Atwood's layered pacing is admirable. She offers just enough, and then disarms with truth. The detail in the passages above is stunning. I feel that her work is so visual because she describes the exquisite things a close-up camera lens would catch, such as a fraying piece of thread where there was once a button. I don't know why that makes it more real, but it does.

Your thoughts? x

Oh! That sounds piping good. Added to my list!

I think I saw the Clint Eastwood / Morgan FreemanThe Unforgiven. I will not be watching the 1960 version. Really, the old Westerns are not my genre. Just looking at the trailers I begin to recoil. Life is too short. I'd rather watch Chaplin, or indeed, stare at a blank wall.

True Grit looks endurable. {I watched the 2010 trailer. Not sure if you were referring to something else. I LOVE the Johhny Cash in the background of the trailer.}

The 2007 3:10 To Yuma looks endurable, but I feel that I could live and die never seeing it and not miss much. I will never purposefully watch the prior version. Again, it's me, not the film. I can't stand the old western genre.

I like that Kurt Russell is in The Hateful Eight, but that's about all that interested me in the trailer. At least the trailer didn't shout at me that he was GOOD AND KIND AND JUST A LONELY MAN TRYING TO GET BY, as every single other trailer has done so far today.

The Outlaw Josey Wells looks more endurable than the others. I can't imagine I'd ever purposefully watch it. I'd rather be doing other things...

I stand behind Dances With Wolves.

“There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or the Whale.

covfefe

Gacela, that is some really brilliant feedback. Especially your conclusion. Thank you. I'm really glad I asked here. x

I'd forgotten about Moby-Dick. That's one of my favorite novels and an excellent example. Ishmael is involved in the tale, but he isn't the focal character who affects the change in the story. That's Ahab. The novel would be completely different through Ahab's eyes. The point is what Ishmael sees. That's exactly what I'm talking about. THANKS, Don! :-)