For me, there are two kinds of 'I couldn't put it down' books; one with a tale so powerful I can't sleep until I find out how it ends, and the other so syntactically creative I marvel at every sentence. Rarely do those two genres come together - the powerful story told with prosaic prestidigitation. Only a few authors come readily to mind, Mary Renault, John Fowles, Arthur C. Clarke. There are others, but I vividly remember those three, hanging around my bedroom night table, guarding the night light.
A new guy has belatedly made it to table. Patrick O'Brien. It's my loss, because O'Brien has left me with 21 - count 'em - Captain Jack Aubrey sea stories, and judging from my first two, all of them are in the rarified air of well-told great tales.
What I really like about him and my other three faves is their way of occasionally scribbling out an absolutely perfect paragraph, something that makes me stop and admit to myself that I could never be a writer, at least not like that. Here's O'Brien, from HMS Surprise:
In Whitehall a grey drizzle wept down upon the Admiralty, but in Sussex the air was dry - dry and perfectly still. The smoke rose from the chimney of the small drawing-room at Mapes Court in a tall, unwavering plume, a hundred feet before its head drifted away in a blue mist to lie in the hollows of the downs behind the house. The leaves were hanging yet, but only just, and from time to time the bright yellow rounds on the tree outside the window dropped of themselves, twirling in their slow fall to join the golden carpet at its foot, and in the silence the whispering impact of each leaf could be heard - a silence as peaceful as an easy death.
Wow.
A new guy has belatedly made it to table. Patrick O'Brien. It's my loss, because O'Brien has left me with 21 - count 'em - Captain Jack Aubrey sea stories, and judging from my first two, all of them are in the rarified air of well-told great tales.
What I really like about him and my other three faves is their way of occasionally scribbling out an absolutely perfect paragraph, something that makes me stop and admit to myself that I could never be a writer, at least not like that. Here's O'Brien, from HMS Surprise:
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| Patrick O'Brien, 1914-2000 |
In Whitehall a grey drizzle wept down upon the Admiralty, but in Sussex the air was dry - dry and perfectly still. The smoke rose from the chimney of the small drawing-room at Mapes Court in a tall, unwavering plume, a hundred feet before its head drifted away in a blue mist to lie in the hollows of the downs behind the house. The leaves were hanging yet, but only just, and from time to time the bright yellow rounds on the tree outside the window dropped of themselves, twirling in their slow fall to join the golden carpet at its foot, and in the silence the whispering impact of each leaf could be heard - a silence as peaceful as an easy death.
Wow.
