PoeticaL
cluttering the net since 2001

Maggie O'farrell

Friday, May. 24, 2002

Wow�go read this�.

 

http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstchapters/story/0,6761,690477,00.html

 

 

Wow, I think this girl can really write in such a beautiful way.This book doesn�t appear to be available in the us. But another of her books is.I�m going to go look for it�.

 

It is lines like the following that make me love the poetry of language�

 

1.

 

Lily sees the world swivel on its axis, her hair, lighter than her, flowing past her face, her fingers shedding roses and spinning discs of coins.

 

2.

 

�in that split-second shutter-snap moment�

 

3.

 

At the touch of fingers, tight as ivy on her sleeve, she looks up.

 

4.

A repetitive, thrumming pulse of music is stretching at the walls of the building.

5.

Her injured hands feel sensitised, peeled like eggs.

 

6.

 

He does it again, fiddling his answers, until he gets cross with himself and turns instead to an article about a testicle festival in Montana.

 

(testical festival? Hahahaha)

 

7.

Suddenly, a woman's voice, in the cracked vowels of a language he couldn't fathom, was sliding down the spiral staircase of his ear.

8.

Someone standing in the corner lets a cup of coffee slip from their fingers and it shatter-smashes, a hot, dark lake of coffee spreading over the neat chess-squares of lino.

9.

As she climbs the stairs she imagines she's leaving a swirl of water molecules in her wake.

 

10.

The moment see-saws between them, and it's one of a peculiar, febrile clarity: she can hear the blood-throb of his heart, the static shift of her shoe-soles against the carpet. There are textures everywhere: he scratches his head and hair-shaft crackles against scalp, nails against follicles. Their clothes, moving on their bodies, are bonfires of silk against cotton, wool against denim.

(damn!)

 

11.

 

They look at it together, a tiny runway on his outstretched hand.

 

12.

 

'You,' he says, as if weighing the word on his tongue.

 

�Maggie I think you rule!�

10:47 a.m. ::
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