It’s hard to pull off writing dialogue for people who have a shared history prior to the story told. The shared secrets and unspoken meanings for codewords can be difficult hurdles for both writer and reader.
In Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Little Girls“, once you go back into the stories of the past, you see the connection to the present day inside jokes. And, in amidst the mystery of why people build bonds in childhood that extend into adulthood, there is some interesting imagery. A small sampling: “In movement the birds were like shaken silk.” And later: “Everywhere was breathless, heavy syringa bushes increasing the hush. The look of evening, caused by the high walls over which rose many and close trees, was premature: the tops of the trees still netted the brightness of day.”
The book is like a time capsule, in and of itself… the time periods described are 1914 and the 1960s England. Oddly enough, the 1914 “memories” seem less dated than the slang of the 1960s. I haven’t finished the book, but I suspect I’ll have more patience than other readers might. YMMV.
Syringa is lilac, I think, right?
Greg – Yes, Syringa is a lilac. I always mistake the word with spiria, which is another shrublike flowering plant.
Haven’t read any Bowen. Seems slightly like the female ensemble books I keep reading, like Lee Smith’s The Last Girls, but darker. After Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, I figured I’d take a break from them. Good, but super, super intense. And doesn’t end happily.
The datedness of the ’60s as opposed to the ’10s reminds me when I was reading Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd versus Sara Paretsky’s Indemnity Only, for teaching, Paretsky in 1979 seemed more dated. It had references to the mob, Al Pacino or Elliott Gould, she didn’t have a computer and all the women’s studies stuff.