Surfing blogs the other day I dropped by MJ Rose's excellent Backstory site and read what was behind a novel titled Nectar from a Stone in a post by its author, Jane Guill. Included was a link to her site. Intrigued by the backstory, I went there. I learned that the novel takes place in Wales in 1351, just after the Plague has wiped out more than a third of Europe's population, and then found an excerpt from the first chapter.
What
a rush it was to read something that failed to even quiver my editorial
reflexes. I ordered the book that day. I thought it would be
informative to share the opening of this novel with you and discuss it
just a bit. Here goes…
North Wales, Summer, 1351
Maelgwyn's 'husbandly attention,' as he called it, went on and on. Strange, how time could creep and crawl.
The room grew darker as the fire died.
"Have you no answer, Elise?"
He had posed a question? Lying there, all she'd heard was the sighing of the wind, outside, and the faint rush of blood in her ears.
He stared down into her face. "Or is this unamiable silence yet another sign of your waywardness?"
This required some reply. "I have never studied to be wayward to you, sir," she said.
"Hah. You require no study, being a born mistress of the art." He reached down to pinch her thigh, his usual way of emphasizing a point. She bit back a cry but knew there would be a bruise. "Had you been attending, wife, you would have heard me say your constant lack of response is vexing. Nor am I able to fathom your ingratitude. Who are you to be ungrateful? Better souls than you suffer every hour. As we speak, worthy Welshmen bleed on French battlefields. And in the course of the Great Mortality, thousands of good Christians fell. Yet you survived, Elise. And then you were so fortunate as to come here to me. Deo dilecti. But why?"
Deo dilecti. Chosen by God. When had she so offended her Maker that she had been chosen by Him, for this?
"It is as great a mystery to me as it is to you," she said, without equivocation.
I was hooked by the story, the character, and the writing. Let's look at how the author does it. See how remarkably efficient the first six brief paragraphs are, just nine sentences. We learn so much…
The first sentence tells us that she is married, they are having sex (or rather that he is having sex), that she could care less, and we learn her husband's name. All that in one sentence. And I felt story questions begin to rise …why does the woman feel this way? What is the husband feeling about this?
Sentence two begins to set the scene, and then the third uses dialogue to begin to bring these people to life, incidentally giving us the protagonist's name as well. I also felt that the paragraph break to this one-sentence piece gave a sense of time elapsing as she lays there, the room darkening and the fire dying.
The fourth and fifth sentences take us further into her mind, deepening our connection to her, and expanding on her lack of connection with what her husband is doing.
And then the tension and potential for conflict is immediately raised in the next brief paragraph. He stares down and talks, not exactly a man in the throes of romantic passion. And he jabs at her with accusatory words: "unamiable" and "waywardness." We now know he sees her as a contrary irritation in his life, and not living up to his expectations.
All that in 74 words. By now I'm thinking, "This is good stuff."
And then sentence number eight reveals more character, and more of their relationship.
This required some reply. "I have never studied to be wayward to you, sir," she said.
Clearly no love here, and she responds with cold intellect and a non-denial denial, as it were.
Then the author abandons short paragraphs to give us much more, all in a rush. The husband's intellectual scorn and a little physical abuse, abuse which is common, for she knows to anticipate a bruise. Through his dialogue, we absorb exposition about the times, a much better way to do it than through a simple author-tells-us style.
And then the next paragraph deepens our understanding of her plight
when she wonders what terrible deed of hers could have so offended God
as to put her in this position. Her response to him
By this time, after a mere 247 words, the length of one typical manuscript page, this character has engaged my sympathy and her husband my enmity. I want to turn the page, I want to know what happens next.
To my eye, this is compelling storytelling. And Ms. Guill does it all with "showing." The author hasn't told us a thing, we've only been privy to action, dialogue, and internal monologue in a scene, not exposition.
A couple of pages later, the author uses flashback the way it should be used: to help the reader understand what's happening in the now. Elise startles when a harsh statement of his jolts her from her musing and her husband says…
"Does my affection overwhelm you, or are you merely in the throes of yet another of your unholy visions?"
This jibe targeted a susceptibility to trance, hers since the season of the Gemini moon in 1343, eight years past, when she was eleven. Terrifying or glorious, her visions came unbidden, mostly eluding interpretation.
Unholy visions? My interest cranks up another notch. There's more in the flashback, and we learn that her visions have revealed strange things, death coming to others, pregnancies, and more. The flashback lasts only for a page or so, and then we're back into the present with more conflict erupting. And this addition of a mystical element, sure to play a part in her story, deepened my interest.
I have no idea how the rest of the novel goes but, if it lives up to the first few pages, it will be a treat. And probably a model of storytelling that can teach us all a thing or two. So my thanks to this author for her work, talent, and craft.
What do you think?
RR
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© 2005 Ray Rhamey