Living by Henry Green
Henry Green (pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke) was a strikingly original writer, with a unique style. The style takes some getting used to. Green is fond of omitting articles, nounless sentences, repeating words, skipping transitions. Such tricks at first seemed affected to me, and merely idiosyncratic. But I soon got over that and realized that his remarkable comparisons, extraordinary observations, and penetrating insights into his characters were partly--or largely--achieved through the very stylistic features that at first seemed peculiar. In the end I thought the writing effective and at times stunningly beautiful.
Here is an example: "She walked in misery. She tried not to think of him. But as sometimes, coming across the sea from a cold country to the tropics and the sky is dull so the sea is like any other sea, so as you are coming tropical birds of exquisite colours settle to rest on the deck, unexpected, infinitely beautiful, so things she remembered of him came one by one back to her mind. And as the ship beat by beat draws nearer to that warmth the birds come from, so her feeling was being encompassed then by the memory of him and it was so warm she sat down on the wet ground and cried."
Living presents and contrasts the lives of the workers and the owners in a Birmingham iron foundry. I shall say no more about the plot. Indeed, there is no single plot; there are several stories, and fragments of stories, juxtaposed, and we shift, sometimes rapidly, from one to another. But that, after all, is what living is: a lot of stories, sometimes impinging on one another, and all going on at the same time. Living is a fascinating and beautiful book.
Here is an example: "She walked in misery. She tried not to think of him. But as sometimes, coming across the sea from a cold country to the tropics and the sky is dull so the sea is like any other sea, so as you are coming tropical birds of exquisite colours settle to rest on the deck, unexpected, infinitely beautiful, so things she remembered of him came one by one back to her mind. And as the ship beat by beat draws nearer to that warmth the birds come from, so her feeling was being encompassed then by the memory of him and it was so warm she sat down on the wet ground and cried."
Living presents and contrasts the lives of the workers and the owners in a Birmingham iron foundry. I shall say no more about the plot. Indeed, there is no single plot; there are several stories, and fragments of stories, juxtaposed, and we shift, sometimes rapidly, from one to another. But that, after all, is what living is: a lot of stories, sometimes impinging on one another, and all going on at the same time. Living is a fascinating and beautiful book.