...Now he and all the strangers around him were going down a covered ramp, all the voices very loud, words echoing off the walls. The clatter of voices thinned. A strange air touched his face.
He looked up, and as he stepped off the ramp onto the level ground he stumbled and nearly fell. He thought of death, in that gap between the beginning of a step and its completion, and at the end of the step he stood on a new earth.
A broad, grey evening was around him. Blue lights, mist blurred, burned far away across a foggy field. The air on his face and hands, in his nostrils and throat and lungs, was cool, damp, many-scented, mild. It was not strange. It was the air of the world from which his race had come, it was the air of home.
Not only does our author give good visual descriptions, but she also does not forget to utilize the other senses. The prose is rather unremarkable, but somehow in those few words above, we still get the moment, the impact of what it must be like to return to the planet of your ancestry, when you were born and raised on another.
Now that we have completed the first chapter, in chapter two, the author begins to flashback to earlier times in the life of the main protagonist. It's been awhile since I've read this novel (30yrs), so I have forgotten enough of the details of the story to be able to enjoy it again as if it were a new story. So far, I am still recommending this novel.
We, in our Literary Group have completed an unabridged edition of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. It was work to get through the epic, but we are all better for our experience. May you all find truth in your reading experience, because if one has eyes to see, one can catch those glimpses of the sublime.
Novo Visum
Neue Ansicht.
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