A House for Mr. Biswas is full of beautiful passages.
But this one might be the best:
Occasionally, a nerve of memory is touched—a puddle reflecting the blue sky after rain, a pack of thumbed cards, the fumbling with a shoe-lace, the smell of a new car, the sound of a stiff wind through trees, the smells and colours of a toyshop, the taste of milk and prunes—and a fragrant of forgotten experience would be dislodged, isolated, puzzling […]. So later, and very slowly, in securer times of different stresses, when the memories had lost the power to hurt, with pain or joy, they would fall into place and give back the past.
Ever had a smell take you back to your childhood? Or just the site of something small and innocuous dislodge an old memory you haven’t thought about in years?
I definitely have, and Naipaul’s writing in that passage is impeccable.I love this sentence in particular: “A fragrant of forgotten experience would be dislodged…”Such great descriptions.
And guess what? I’m FINALLY about to finish this book. I plan on reviewing it next Wednesday.