Raquelle's Blog :)

Oh my gosh this book was so sad and so good and I don’t think I’ve ever read writing like this. Leif Enger is truly a literary genius. Like he is so clever and I wish I could portray emotions and feelings and sententament like he does. He just paints a picture so well with words. If there was a picture in the literary dictionary for the writing concept of “show, not tell” Enger’s picture would be there as a shining example of someone who does just that. He’s so incredible and there were so many quotes that left me wishing I wasn’t reading alone so I could read parts out loud to someone else and see the surprise on their face and share in excitement with them at this great writing. Here’s a few of the exact quotes I would have interrupted someone’s conversation to read to them:

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”

“Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave – now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.”

“We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.”

“You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.”

“Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.”

and oh,

“Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone’s been missing too long.”

Point proven. And there’s another book that he’s written from which my dad read me quotes one summer night earlier this year while I was puttering around the kitchen and it was incredible. I wish I was that incredible at something.