Today’s post is simple.
First, read the opening paragraph to The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen.
THAT morning’s ice, no more than a brittle film, had cracked and was now floating in segments. These tapped together, or, parting, left channels of dark water, down which swans in slow indignation swam. The island stood in frozen woody brown dusk; it was now between three and four in the afternoon. A sort of breath from the clay, from the city outside the park, condensing, made the air unclear; through this, the trees round the lake soared frigidly up. Bronze cold of January bound the sky and the landscape; the sky was shut to the sun–but the swans, the rims of ice, the pallid withdrawn Regency terraces had an unnatural burnish, as though cold were light. There is something momentous about the height of winter. Steps rang on the bridges, and along the black walks. This weather had set in; it would freeze harder tonight.
Now, what’s your initial reaction to having read that? What are your thoughts on what this novel may or may not be like?
I know what mine is but I don’t want to influence yours so we’ll revisit this on Thursday. If you open this book and read that first paragraph, what’s your reaction?
