Isn’t this cover photo lovely? What a gorgeous veil. Like a crown. And gorgeous like Alice Hoffman’s writing. She writes like velvet. See, I write that sentence and it lays there. She would write. “Her words are pinned like bright stars on a deep blue velvet sky.”
Why can’t I write like that? Oh, wait. I can. I just don’t bother. Until I read someone like Hoffman who is a master on the sentence level, on the word level, on the vowel level. Honestly. Read her. The new one is The Marriage of Opposites and the story is just as captivating as the prose.
It’s so important for writers to read really good writing. No matter your genre, reach for the greats. I love my thrillers and my rom coms but sometimes you just have to go deep to reach high. Hoffman will inspire you to do that.
Meanwhile I really did lose my crown. Luckily it is only temporary and even more fortuitously my dentist is seeing me as an emergency at 10 am in the morning. Meanwhile I am eating a banana on one side of my mouth and sipping a coconut rum drink from a straw. This is all Hoffman’s influence. Her story takes place on the island of rum and bananas and coconuts…St Thomas in the nineteenth century.
My husband is away for the weekend and this whole tooth thing just has me feeling reckless drinking rum in the late afternoon all alone reading a really good book. Life could be worse, even minus the crown.
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Thank you for the Alice Hoffman update. I’ve read earlier books, but hadn’t heard about that one.
(Rum in the Afternoon sounds a good story title.)
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Rum in the Afternoon sounds like a terrific story title! Thanks June. I really love this one. It’s like she took the tropical paradise of St Thomas and infused her words with their languid beauty.
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I’m there toothless on the beach smothered in coconut oil and drinking rum! Slurp! Also going to check out Hoffman! Thanks as always!!! Loved the velvet stuff too!
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Alice Hoffman–every line is like a small poem. And a history lesson. And a magical dream of love and suffering.
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Sorry to hear about the tooth… and I know what you mean about reading inspiring writers. I will recommend this book to Jaye, as she’s recently had an epiphany about her writing. Apparently she can’t write even one sentence that doesn’t have the word ‘was’ in it. She’s tearing her hair out!
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Hi Anita, ha! a clue to who the writer to the comment is! WAS is a particularly difficult word. It’s passive, not active, so it squats on the page doing nothing. Ask Jaye if she can find an active verb to replace the was. For example “was tanning on the beach” becomes “soaked up the sun on the beach.” That’s the key. Find active verbs. Not always possible but well worth the effort.
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Reblogged this on Anita & Jaye Dawes.
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