A IS FOR ALIBI, BY Sue Grafton
Review of author's technique:
Sue Grafton writes in a way pleasurable to the reader. Grafton obviously lives vicariously through her Kinsey Millhone character, and describes Kinsey's life in the first person in such detail it has drawn me into the novel more than any motion picture could. This could be best demonstrated straight away in A Is for Alibi--the first in the Millhone series--by her making coffee for a new client:
Page 3: [She had asked Nikki Fife...]
"Would you like some coffee?
"She nodded almost imperceptibly. I pulled out the coffee-pot from the bottom of the file cabinet and filled it from the Sparklets water bottle behind the door. I liked it that she didn't protest the trouble I was going to. I put in a filter paper and ground coffee and plugged in the pot. The gurgling sound was comforting, like a pump in an aquarium."
It is this descriptive writing that captures your mind--at least ...my mind--and I'm lost to this world and live in the story, involved in this life of this young woman investigator: seeing her visitor whose hair "...had grown out to its natural shade, a brown so pale that it appeared nearly colorless."
You see her office; her client; and move with her as she makes the coffee and we listen to that gurgling sound we are so accustomed to hearing in our own kitchens and from now on be thinking of it as sounding like an aquarium pump.
Through reviewing Grafton, and through just having reread an Anne Tyler book, I see why I like these two authors way of writing. Their words capture our imagination and take us out of our lives and into theirs better than most writers.
To me, this is what a novel is all about--to take one away on an adventurous journey into another's life--a vacation where one can shrug off her own life with the ease of taking off a coat, and no tedious packing of bags necessary.
Like with the story of "The Beauty and the Beast, where the only way Belle could return to her world would be a turn of a magic ring; we too can be exported from world to world at any time by merely opening a book, reading from where we last left off, and closing it, marking the spot where this reader's vicarious life left off when our real world infringed upon my reading time.
The Millhone stories do that for me, so before I review the book at book club, I'll want to read this report of that phenomena--our most desirable reason to read anything in the first place: ...to be carried away in our own imagination... to almost get lost in some great author's storytelling. What a blessing authors are, who can export us in this way! A true vacation is when one can leave one's own life behind and walk into another's life like we were peeking over their shoulder, or stepping into their skin.
Review of author's technique:
Sue Grafton writes in a way pleasurable to the reader. Grafton obviously lives vicariously through her Kinsey Millhone character, and describes Kinsey's life in the first person in such detail it has drawn me into the novel more than any motion picture could. This could be best demonstrated straight away in A Is for Alibi--the first in the Millhone series--by her making coffee for a new client:
Page 3: [She had asked Nikki Fife...]
"Would you like some coffee?
"She nodded almost imperceptibly. I pulled out the coffee-pot from the bottom of the file cabinet and filled it from the Sparklets water bottle behind the door. I liked it that she didn't protest the trouble I was going to. I put in a filter paper and ground coffee and plugged in the pot. The gurgling sound was comforting, like a pump in an aquarium."
It is this descriptive writing that captures your mind--at least ...my mind--and I'm lost to this world and live in the story, involved in this life of this young woman investigator: seeing her visitor whose hair "...had grown out to its natural shade, a brown so pale that it appeared nearly colorless."
You see her office; her client; and move with her as she makes the coffee and we listen to that gurgling sound we are so accustomed to hearing in our own kitchens and from now on be thinking of it as sounding like an aquarium pump.
Through reviewing Grafton, and through just having reread an Anne Tyler book, I see why I like these two authors way of writing. Their words capture our imagination and take us out of our lives and into theirs better than most writers.
To me, this is what a novel is all about--to take one away on an adventurous journey into another's life--a vacation where one can shrug off her own life with the ease of taking off a coat, and no tedious packing of bags necessary.
Like with the story of "The Beauty and the Beast, where the only way Belle could return to her world would be a turn of a magic ring; we too can be exported from world to world at any time by merely opening a book, reading from where we last left off, and closing it, marking the spot where this reader's vicarious life left off when our real world infringed upon my reading time.
The Millhone stories do that for me, so before I review the book at book club, I'll want to read this report of that phenomena--our most desirable reason to read anything in the first place: ...to be carried away in our own imagination... to almost get lost in some great author's storytelling. What a blessing authors are, who can export us in this way! A true vacation is when one can leave one's own life behind and walk into another's life like we were peeking over their shoulder, or stepping into their skin.
posted by Cranberry Jo @ 8/28/2009 06:34:00 PM
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