Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing some of my favourite descriptions from books I’ve blogged about.

As I ended up with quite the long list, I’ve split them into 2 parts.

They’re listed in chronological order, starting with the earlier ones I reviewed back in 2013.

That gave me pause… I hadn’t realised I’d been writing reviews for the past 7 years!

Ford Madox Ford – ‘The Good Soldier’:
“Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men’s lives like the lives of us good people … broken, tumultuous, agonized and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?”

‘The Greatest Knight’ by Elizabeth Chadwick

Elizabeth Chadwick – ‘The Greatest Knight’:
‘… Kendal in high summer, the sky deep blue with feathers of cloud and the curlews calling over moor and pasture. A place of empty spaces, richer in sheep than in people … It was a landscape of lowering hills, lakes and meres, fields divided by dry stone walls that had stood time out of mind. A beautiful, wind-cleaned world … Here there was the same sense of majesty, a brooding quality and the hint of a desolate harshness that was only a rainstorm away.’

John Steinbeck:
‘Cannery Row’:
‘Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the grey time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.’

‘Sweet Thursday’:
‘The seer said, “I saw a mermaid last night. You remember, there was a half-moon and a thin drifting mist. There was colour in the night, not like the black and grey and white of an ordinary night. Down at the end of the beach a shelf of rock reaches out, and the tide was low so that there was a smooth bed of kelp. She swam to the edge and then churned her tail, like a salmon leaping a rapid. And then she lay on the kelp bed and made dancing figures with her white arms and hands. She didn’t go away until the rising tide covered the kelp bed.”
“Was she a dream? Did you imagine her?”
“I don’t know. But if I did I’m proud that I could imagine anything so beautiful.”’

Parke Godwin – ‘Firelord’:
‘It’s clear as sudden sunlight, something looked at so often and never seen: a child playing. But more than play. Meaning. Drost moves to a sure music I’ve forgotten in growing up – dances to it, floats, celebrates and delights in it. Drost is three, and in this magic, discovering summer, sees the world fresh without hanging names and signs on it, reaches for and touches it before knowing it forever apart from his prisoned self. The small feet stamp and mountains tremble before his challenge, the arms sweep up in the growth of flowers, and I know why men lose sight of the face of God: because it is so close.’

Marcus Sedgwick:
‘Revolver’:
‘… home is not something you find outside yourself; home is something you carry inside you, and it’s made from the memories of the people you love, and the people who have loved you.’

‘My Swordhand is Singing’ by Marcus Sedgwick

‘My Swordhand is Singing’:
‘Even here among the thickness of the trees [the snow] lay heavily on the ground, whisked and funnelled by the east wind into strange hills and troughs, like white beasts lurking at the foot of the birches… Trees stretched off into the distance in every direction, becoming grey ghosts and then no more than suggestions of ghosts.’

Rene Denfeld – ‘The Enchanted’:
‘When I first started reading, I didn’t know how to sound some words. I would whisper them inside my head. Sioux, paisley, ruche. Obsolete, rubric, crux. How do you say those words? How do they sound when others say them? Are they as pretty as they sound inside my head? … I decided that in the end, it doesn’t matter. In my mind, the words sound right. They chase each other around like boats on a lake after dusk …’

Cormac McCarthy – ‘The Road’:
‘He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.’

Nancy Springer – ‘I Am Mordred’:
‘It was a strange, exalted and terrible thing to be the King. Everything he did sent out echoes like a great bell.’

‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway – ‘The Old Man and the Sea’:
‘… the surface of the ocean bulged ahead of the boat and the fish came out. He came out unendingly and water poured from his sides. He was bright in the sun and his head and back were dark purple and in the sun the stripes on his sides showed wide and a light lavender. His sword was as long as a baseball bat and tapered like a rapier and he rose his full length from the water and then re-entered it, smoothly, like a diver and the old man saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under…’

Hope you enjoyed this little selection; more next week.

A Selection of Favourite Descriptions From Books I've Reviewed Part I