Once in a while I come across a delightful phrase or paragraph in the writing of a good author that may or not have anything to do with the story being told. Right now I am reading Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood. It is a mystery featuring the most wonderful Phryne Fisher, a detective in Melbourne in 1928.
Phryne is trying to discover the whereabouts of a lost girl and she is talking to the girl’s friend who is a musician. Phyrne’s lover is with them and the two suddenly start talking about Bach. Phyrne asks that they return to the missing girl and then they can continue to talk about Bach.
“She knew conversations about Bach. Days could go past.
Continents could drift. Fossils could form.”
We all have subjects that entice us in just that way whether Bach or Shakespeare or the Hubble Telescope ~ subjects in which we can immerse ourselves with another enthusiast and let time flow gently past. It is a good writer who can, in a few sentences, touch the common human experience.
2 comments:
Such a beautifully crafted pair of sentences. Is the rest of her(?) writing like that?
Her writing is very, very good. This of course stood out ~ and I am deep into a series and continuing to love it and keep reading. So even the "ordinary" writing - dialogue, descriptions of situations and places that go with any mystery - is very good. She also has done incredible research (long bibliographies at the end of each book) into the history of the time and place in which she has placed her heroine. I would recommend the series even to you who doesn't read mysteries. :)
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