Those of you who've known me online for long know that I often point out bad prose—hence a decade of the Purple Prose Parody Contest. It's less often that I talk about prose in a positive sense. When I do, it's generally to compliment spare prose, as I've done with other DIKs, such as Paulo Coelho's The Fifth Mountain, or overall spareness, both in prose and plot, as with Mary Balogh. Fallenberg's writing isn't so much spare as it is precise. Coelho's writing packs an emotional punch because the prose itself is so spare. Balogh's emotional success comes from the all-round spareness. It is Fallenberg's precision that works so well in this book because it allows him a tremendous fluidity, like Baryshnikov flying across a stage.
The book features an 85-year-old choreographer, so indulge my using that as a metaphor for Fallenberg's writing. Just as a choreographer can capture the fluidity and emotionality of a piece of music and dance, so does this author. Just as a dance features moments of different tempos and varies in boldness and strength, so does Fallenberg write with a pin-point focus, creating a similar fluidity and elegance.
In a couple of scenes his lead character explains how he sees and feels music in his head. While a beautiful concept, it did not fit my experience of music. I wanted needed to understand it better because it was conveyed with such beauty. As music is so integral to his being, I read those passages aloud to my husband, who seemed surprised when I asked if he understood what Fallenberg's character was trying to explain. "Of course," he said matter-of-factly, as though everybody experienced music in that way.
It's been quite awhile since we had that conversation, but it wasn't until recently that I realized he sees music...and when I'm reading, I hear dialog. I hear dialect, voice inflection, even timbre. I don't listen to audiobooks because hearing someone else voice characters interferes with my experience of hearing them in my head.
Among the reasons I so love Eve Dallas' Roarke is that his voice is so clear in my head, particularly when he jokes with Eve or croons sweet nothing to her in that yummy Irish brogue. And when he speaks Gaelic in moments of pure passion, I'm a goner. When a poster to yesterday's piece for H&H objected to a similar speech cadence in Roberts/Robb's writing, I had to sit back and think about whether I'd ever noticed that. I haven't, but I'll start paying attention. That said, though, some of her most vibrant characters are those with accents, so perhaps there's something to her criticism.
What about you? Do you experience music, art, or books in an unusual way?
Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Sausages
Jonathan Tropper doesn't write absurdist fiction, but it's high praise indeed that How to Talk to a Widower reminds me in some ways of Christopher Moore's marvelous A Dirty Job. Both authors created hilarity from the dark premise of a beloved wife's death. Both authors appeal to those of us who are "wordies," readers who enjoy the use of language itself, but Moore's novel, while it does have moments of poignance, wasn't written to provoke the same feelings of tenderness Tropper achieves in his pathos-filled comedy. Inappropriate it may be, but brilliantly, funnily so. Thank you, James, for lending me your copy. 
A couple of years ago I read and 
followed by You Suck and Fluke: I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings. Although for my friend Gail last year's Fool supplanted A Dirty Job, I feel as though I need to re-read King Lear to do it justice, and simply haven't had the time. I do plan to read the brand-spanking-new Bite Me, though - which follows Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck in a series - as soon as possible. While the second book wasn't as fantabulous as the first, the excerpt for the third looks hilarious.
Lamb, btw, is the perfect book for any friend with a great sense of humor, whether or not they read a lot of fiction. I suggested it for my husband, who reads a lot of dry crap for his law practice and so doesn't do a lot of recreational reading, and now he's convinced "this guy writes like me."
