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From the Fog City Divas Blog Archives "On the Joys of Language"
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I was perusing my romance keeper shelves this weekend, trying to find room to squeeze in a new one (Joanna Bourne's
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The second category most represented on my keeper shelves are books whose prose got to me. They may also be emotional gut-clenchers, but the reason I love to re-read them is to bask in beautiful prose. I have always been a sucker for poetic narrative, for passages that compell me to read them again and again, for the sheer beauty of language. Word choices, groupings of words, rhythms and cadence, alliteration, elegant imagery, sharp metaphor -- when it comes together just right, language can make me want to swoon with pleasure. And if a book happens to combine the emotional rush of a gut-clenching story with beautiful prose, it's a special experience ... a virtuoso performance. I remember when I first discovered romance novels (rather late in life, I confess) how surprised I was to find so many books written in wonderfully lyrical prose (as opposed to flowery, ornate, overblown prose so often labeled as "purple" -- that's NOT what I'm talking about here), and how sad it was that the cheesey romance packaging meant that most mainstream readers with a passion like mine for beautiful language would never know about these wonderful books.
I plucked a few books at random from the shelves and thought I would share with you some favorite passages where the language/style/voice/whatever you want to call it resonates FOR ME in a big way. As you will see, sometimes I am moved by long paragraphs and sometimes by a single sentence, sometimes by descritive imagery and sometimes by the absolutely perfect word, or turn of phrase, to define what the character is feeling in that moment.
All those beautiful words! I could drown in them. They pull me in just as surely as a tight plot and a powerful love story. It's one of the reasons I am a slow reader. I savor the words. I listen to their sounds and rhthyms in my head. I could go on and on with examples from other lyrical writers -- writers like Tracy Grant and Kate Moore and Patrica Gaffney and Connie Brockway (anyone remember in AS YOU DESIRE when Harry compares Desdemona to Egypt? *sigh*) -- but then the blog would exceed anyone's patience. I know a lot of you, including some of my fellow Divas, are not as enamored of lyrical narrative as I am. Or at least you don't look for it, or particularly want it, in romance novels. I have heard of readers who skip over descriptive narrative because they find it boring. They want to get on with the story without paying attention to the actual words. But some of us love the words. And we, in the Romance community, talk so much about story and charaterization and romantic conflict etc that I thought I would add language to the mix of elements that make a great book for ME .
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candicehern.com |
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With publishers asking for shorter and shorter manuscripts these days, poetic narrative is often the first thing to be sacrificed in the editing process. So I'm finding fewer books are being added to my keeper shelves based on language, which is one reason I was thrilled to make a spot for 
He watched her as she raised a hand to shield her face, looking up with a piece of laundry. Then she would avert her head and pin blind to the clothesline. Back to the ground, bending in half; a rounded swaddle of dark cotton, the bowed ears of her knotted skirts dominating the air for the moment, raised over thin, stockingless ankles. She bent and stretched, pins between her teeth, her hands sheilding, smoothing, shaking, organizing, stringing up clothes. A blouson. A chemise. An untold mangle of more wet clothes rested at her feet in a small basket. She made regular, rhythmic progress, nudging the basket with a foot or dragging it along, even as she retrieved a pin or a piece of clothing. She had wonderful coordination, a loose-hipped limberness that allowed a foot to coax and an arm to reach without her having to watch either very closely. The ritual had for Graham all the perfect, unorchestrated balance of a bird with its jointed tail -- life on a narrow limb, always a factional adjustment to accommodate the wind, position, and view to the current task.
But she could still feel the sea inside her stomach, and color and movement and noise came at her in waves: men swarming to unload the ship, the early morning sun ricocheting hard between smooth sea and blue sky, gulls wheeling in arcs of silver and white. No clouds floated above to cut the glare or soften the heat. Sylvie took her first deep breath of truly English air. It was hot and clotted with dock odors, and made matters inside her stomach worse instead of better.
If she moved closer she would catch his scent -- be able to breathe it deeply into her starved lungs -- the honest tang of freshly mown grass with a deeper note echoing the damp heat of clean male flesh.
She heard him groan. She saw the muscles of his belly tighten. Tighten and tremble now as well. She breathed his dark earth smell. The salts and vapors of him seemed to seep through her pores; she feasted on his private, pungent flavors: sour, salt, bitter; yeasty, like good bread rising. She opened, loosened, lost herself; she needn't, she couldn't caress him any longer, she had only to contain him now,to absorb him, to receive what issued from him. To drink him.
