As a late bloomer, many high school topics, including reading and writing were wasted on me. In returning more recently to reading, and to a lesser extent writing, I have started to gain an appreciation of these arts, and in turn to mourn the loss of this early education. Perhaps these are the reasons that I cite in trying to explain why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. And as a hidden gem, what could be more appropriate than reading a book about writing crafted by an author whose name is Prose?
Starting with an examination of the individual words used in constructing novels and moving through sentences, paragraphs, and onward to the rhythms that writers employ to convey their thoughts and feelings, Francine Prose supports her observations with generous qoutations from classic novels. Without these rich examples, I wonder if her points would have fallen on me as deafly as did those of high school teachers. During the course of this book, I found myself spending an increasing proportion of time examining Prose's own style, an act that underscored how this book was already changing the manner in which I read.
Upon finishing Prose's book, her infectious love of books, left me felling like a teenager with the newly minted drivers liscence eager to take the family car out for a spin, wanting to race to the classics that were quoted throughout, and then helpfully listed in the final chapter. The most generous praise that I can give is to acknowledge a hidden desire, if not to write a full length novel, at least to improve on my existing writing.