This weekend, I started reading a new book. I hesitate to tell you about it, because everyone seems to be avoiding spoilers, but I can’t help myself. The author has such a way with words, such a way of building picturesque phrases, that I’m verklempt. I just have to share some examples with you:
- “He picks up a shot glass that he is currently dating, a souvenir of the World’s Fair of 1977.”
- “According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy.”
- “Night is an orange smear over Sitka, a compound of fog and the light of sodium-vapor streetlamps. It has the translucence of onions cooked in chicken fat.”
- “An old man, pushing himself like a rickety handcart, weaves a course toward the door of the hotel. A short man, under five feet, dragging a large valise. […] The valise is an ancient chimera of stained brocade and scratched hide. The whole right side of the man’s body sags five degrees lower than the left, where the suitcase, which must contain the old boy’s entire collection of lead ingots, weighs it down.”
- “Now the kid was going to be sleeping in the bedroom that had once served Meyer and Naomi’s father as Klein bottle for the infinite loop of his insomnia”.
- “The break room has also long housed a thriving colony of spores that, at a point in the remote past, spontaneously evolved the form and appearance of a love seat.”
- “They walk past the Pearl of Manila, though its Filipino-style Chinese donuts beckon like glittering sugar-dusted tokens of a better existance.”
- “They leave Brennan standing outside the Front Page, with his necktie smacking him on the forehead like a remorseful palm…”
- “Landsman would love a beer. […] In the meantime, the one that Ester-Malke gave him has yet to leave his body, but Landsman is getting indications that it has its bags packed and is ready to go.”
Such purty words.
By now, you’ve guessed that I’m not talking about Harry Potter 7. That’s next on the queue. This book is “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” by Michael Chabon. So far, it is quite a remarkable book.
