{"id":41541,"date":"2023-10-12T06:30:47","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T17:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=41541"},"modified":"2023-10-15T15:56:29","modified_gmt":"2023-10-15T02:56:29","slug":"gorgeous-words-tan-twan-eng-the-garden-of-evening-mists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2023\/10\/12\/gorgeous-words-tan-twan-eng-the-garden-of-evening-mists\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorgeous Words: Tan Twan Eng & “The Garden of Evening Mists”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, when reporting back to you on my read of Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists <\/strong><\/em><\/a>(2012), I mentioned that the writing was beautiful and subtle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In other words, the book is full of gorgeous words. Here’s\u00a0 small sample, to add to Monday’s post:<\/p>\n

“In the shallows, a grey heron cocked its head at me, one leg poised in the air, like the hand of a pianist who has forgotten the notes to his music. It dropped the leg a second later and speared its beak into the water. … I knew it could not be the same bird from nearly forty years before but, as I watched it, I hoped that it was; I wanted to believe that by entering this sanctuary the heron had somehow managed to slip through the fingers of time.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

To my right and at the top of an incline stood Aritomo’s house. Light shone from the windows, the kitchen chimney scribbling smoke over the treetops. A man appeared at the front door and walked down the slope towards me. He stopped a few paces away, perhaps to create a space for us to study one another. We are like every single plant and stone and view in the garden, I thought, the distance between one another carefully measured.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It’s not just the gorgeous words on their own, it’s the way the author puts them together. A big part of my love of reading and writing is appreciating that art.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, when reporting back to you on my read of Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists (2012), I mentioned that the writing was beautiful and subtle. In other words, the book is full of gorgeous words. Here’s\u00a0 small sample, to add to Monday’s post: “In the shallows, a grey heron cocked its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-other-writers","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41547,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41541\/revisions\/41547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}