Tag: Fiction

My Review Of A Fantastic Book

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Fiction Writing, Inspirational2 Comments

lovely book unlikely pilgrimage of harold fry

I’ll start out by saying, no, this book is not a newly published one, but came out in 2012.  I’ve just been behind on reading contemporary works until a few months ago because I’ve been reading so much for my university classes and nonfiction and spiritual books.  Now, on with my very informal and basic review.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is one of the best books I’ve read in decades.  It harkens back to the classic literary fiction of the ages, meshed with contemporary life.  I hope that makes sense!

Short synopsis of the story via amazon:

Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning a letter arrives, addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl, from a woman he hasn’t heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye. But before Harold mails off a quick reply, a chance encounter convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. In his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold Fry embarks on an urgent quest. Determined to walk six hundred miles to the hospice, Harold believes that as long as he walks, Queenie will live.

I love stories of the human condition, the human spirit, and ones that have flickers of hope in them.  They are beautiful, and this book is loaded with these elements.  Also, I am one drawn in by writing style, beautiful prose in descriptions, etc.  Some folks aren’t interested in that, but I am.  The characters are quirky, endearing, and so very human.

The main character, Harold, is such a broken, beautiful soul with a gentle spirit.  He decides to walk those six hundred miles to see Queenie, a former co-worker, with the belief that Queenie will live the months it takes for him to walk there and arrive.

Harold and his wife’s relationship is strained at the beginning of the book and little love is shown, and his wife experiences many different feelings dealing with his absence and her own thoughts of the past several decades.

Through the walk, Harold reminisces about his childhood and the past many decades, and encounters interesting people along the way.

Here’s a little review I wrote on it when I finished reading it a few weeks ago and posted in Goodreads:

The story is precious, touching, unique, and wonderful. It starts out at a good tempo and slows a little after a couple chapters in, but once you keep reading through those slower chapters, it continues to unfold like the blooming of a rose, with such sweetness and touching moments of the human struggle and spirit, that you become more and more drawn in. Lovely, beautiful, brilliant, and well worth the read and to own.

I highly recommend this book.  

*You probably have already read this one, right?  If you have, share your thoughts.  If you haven’t, maybe you’d like to share your thoughts anyway. 🙂

 

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A Flash of Fiction

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Fiction Writing2 Comments

woman running on street

I wrote this little piece a month or so ago.  It was written from stream of consciousness and just for a practice writing activity.  Hope you enjoy the short read.

 

Running Out of Time

 

Her chest ached, and her throat was dry as dust. She’d run two and a half miles and kept sprinting down the sidewalk parallel to the city’s park, as the sun hovered over the horizon. Its pink and orange rays fell softly on the street. The road and town were deserted.

The pounding of shoes on the pavement behind her made her quicken her pace, as her calves bunched in protest. Her breaths came out uneven and ragged. The running footsteps at her rear grew louder, and she willed her body to move faster, even as she heard his grunting and heavy breathing creeping over her shoulder.

“Oh, God,” she said through a bedraggled exhale.

Seeing the sidewalk’s end and an intersection, she turned the corner sharply to her left, rapidly moving her sneakers and extending her legs, cutting the distance ahead of her. A shop’s neon green sign blinked at her from further down the street. She kept her eyes focused on the store’s window just as a hand gripped her bouncing shoulder. She screamed, tearing away from him and continuing to run. The light breeze in the air carried the scent of garbage from a set of dumpsters as she flew by them, grimacing.

The silence of the empty town was shattered by the man’s gravelly voice. “You can’t run forever.”

She didn’t waste her breath answering, but tilt her head down, stared at the cement before her, and pushed herself as much as her body could bear, her legs burning in response.

Just fifty more feet, she told herself, as she closed in on the shop’s window displaying various antique clocks. Slowing long enough to grapple the door’s handle, she sucked in her breath as the man’s callused hand landed atop hers, his body slamming against hers.

He wrapped his bulky arm around her chest and held her so tight that she thought her ribs would crack.

“Let me go!” she cried.

“Not a chance,” the man said, putting the hand he’d had over hers against the door to prevent her from opening it.

She struggled, her eyes wide with fear.

“Time’s up,” another voice announced.

“Ah,” was all she could say.

She slowed her pace on the gym’s treadmill and stepped off, as her personal trainer jotted down on his clipboard the recorded mileage.

“You’ve improved, Gena, by two minutes. Wow! You were really going for it the last thirty seconds.” He smiled in appreciation.

Gena wiped her glistening neck with a towel. “I had motivation.”

 

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Pieces of Paradisiacal Prose

On By dotluvs2writeIn Beauty, blogging, Fiction Writing, Writing TechniquesLeave a comment

butterfly beauty

We all know and enjoy the written beauty that is found in poetry.  I know we readers also appreciate beautiful prose in fiction (and in creative nonfiction). When I come across such glorious text, I have to read it at least three times, drinking in the imagery, language, and writing style of the author’s work.  I’ve read a few books in the past two year mostly for my World Literature and Romantic Literature classes, and some of the writing really struck me at how stunning and masterfully written it was.  So, I’m going to share with you a few excerpts from three books.

plain truth book

First is a more contemporary piece.  It’s a piece of lovely writing from author, Jodi Picoult, in her novel, Plain Truth, that I read in my free time and finished a couple of weeks ago.  One of the main characters has been longing to have a child for the past several years, and she finds out she’s pregnant, which is a total surprise to her.  Here’s what the text says:

In the past five years, I had wanted a baby so much I ached. I would wake up sometimes beside Stephen and feel my arms throb, as if I had been holding a newborn weight the whole night. I would see an infant in a stroller and feel my whole body reach; I would mark my monthly period on the calendar with the sense that my life was passing me by. I wanted to grow something under my heart. I wanted to breathe, to eat, to blossom for someone else.

As a mother of two sons, I can not only relate to these words of hope, longing, and love, but also admire how she wrote it.

 

dr. jekyll & mr. hyde book

I read excerpts from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for my World Literature class several months ago, and I fell in love with Stevenson’s writing style.  It was beautiful.  Beautiful prose about the struggle of good and evil within a person.  I do plan to read the whole story one of these days!  The excerpt I’m going to share is the evil side that possessed the doctor as Hyde whenever he drank that nasty potion!

Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.

Nearly all of Dr. Jekyll’s confession at the end of the book is like a psalmody.  Amazing and glorious writing style.

 

the last man by mary shelley

Lastly, I read The Last Man by Mary Shelley for my Romantic Literature class and absolutely fell in love with Shelley’s poetic, beautiful, flowing prose.  I was so moved by it, I read it at least five times, and to my husband, son, and friend.  It has to be some of the best writing I’ve ever laid eyes on!  Here are three excerpts of her aesthetic work:

The laughing morning air filled them while sun-light bathed earth, sky and ocean–the placid waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully kissed the dark sides of our little skiff, murmuring a welcome.

Behold us now in our frail tenement, hemmed in by hungry, roaring waves, buffeted by winds.  In the inky east two vast clouds, sailing contrary ways, met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder muttered.

I thought I saw Adrian at no great distance from me, clinging to an oar; I sprung from my hold, and with energy beyond my human strength, I dashed aside the waters as I strove to lay hold of him.  As that hope failed, instinctive love of life animated me, and feelings of contention, as if a hostile will combated with mine.  I breasted the surges, and flung them from me as I would the opposing front and sharpened claws of a lion about to enfang my bosom.  When I had been beaten down by one wave, I rose on another, while I felt bitter pride curl my lip.

 

Unbelievable talent!  I hope these pieces of paradisiacal prose made your day and life richer and more beautiful. 🙂  I’d love to see your favorite excerpts of aesthetic writings.  Please feel free to share them below. 🙂

 

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