Thursday, December 2, 2010

when every word matters or how Anne Rice writes

I picked up the latest Anne Rice book, "Of Love and Evil" at the library yesterday. This is the second title in the Songs of the Seraphim series. I was a bit surprised at the length of the book. Coming in at 177 pages, this is more of a novella than a novel. I've only read about 40 pages thus far and I now understand why the story is so much shorter than most of her other stories. Every word matters. Talk about a lesson in lean, but lush writing. We are talking a master's class in between the covers of this book.

She has packed so much power and insight into such few words. The word choice. The sentence structure. Incredible.  The only thing I can liken it to is dessert. Sometimes you have a dessert and you finish the slice or serving and think....hmmm, I could eat two more of those. Other times the dessert is so rich, dense, complex and heavy that you struggle to eat half of it.

That is this book. I'm going to read this one slowly and savor each and every word.

She is in New York right now doing the news shows, interviews and book signings. I caught her interview on GMA with George Stephanopoulos via a link she provided on her facebook page.  Great interview. Her faith 'journey' is very interesting to me, perhaps because she was kind enough to exchange emails with me several years back when her first Christ the Lord book came out.

Happy Thursday....the weekend is sneaking up on us.

No comments: