“Dench had been resentful, as if Leith were somehow to
blame. Driscoll would fine it hateful—that Leith, having witnessed the
preliminaries, would have been the one to come upon the consequences. He
himself felt secretly culpable—as if with that look of acknowledgement, he’d
conspired in the act.” P. 37
-Leith’s own ambiguous role/responsibility in life and death
in this land, connected to the idea that he’s responsible for Peter Exley
because he saved his life. Begs the question, what can Leith possibly do? The
investigating is certainly valuable, but to whom? Also sets up easy tension
between him and the Driscolls
“Or perhaps it’s simply that I miss China. Missing China is
my habit of years. I was even homesick for China while I was there, a paradox
emblematic of the enigmatic land. At all events, it will be fine to see you
again, and in this hemisphere.” P. 43
-Great use of letter to say something bigger/grander in
first person that would perhaps feel forced or less genuine from the narrator.
Also introduces theme of never being at home, of always missing, both as part
of the war, but as a part of Leith/Helen, though addressed to Peter, who can
also understand, it reaches outward very well.
“He’d grown up in China and Indochina, and knew that these
places were evaporating, transforming. The last days of all their centuries
should be witnessed and recounted by someone who was not a spy, not a
sociologist, beholden to no one.” P.49
-This page does awesome work of discussing his book and what
it means to him and why he’d doing it, I should probably include something like
this in mine. It tells us about the particular perspective of our protagonist,
of why he makes a worthy protagonist, and includes that mysterious line about
being “beholden to no one” which seems ripe to be destroyed.
“Filth was in fact on Peter Exley’s mind in those first
weeks: the accretion filming the Orient, the shimmer of sweat or excrement. A
railing or handle one’s fingers would not willingly grasp; walls and objects
grimed with existence; the limp, soiled, colonial money, little notes curled
and withered, like shavings from some discoloured central lode. Ammoniac reek,
or worse, in paved alleys and under stuccoed arcades. Shaved heads of children,
blotched with sores; grey polls of infants lolling from the swag that bound
them to the mother’s back. And the great clots and blobs of tubercular spittle
shot with blood, unavoidable underfoot, what Rysom called ‘poached eggs.’ In
such uncleanness, nothing could appear innocent, not the infants themselves or
even diseased chow dogs roaming the Chinese streets, or scrawny chickens
pecking at street dirt.” P.62
-Really gorgeous description and fabulous control. Great use
of Peter as a filter to direct our attention to a way of seeing, to a perspective,
that we can outwardly see, that includes sensory detail as a way of
simultaneously showing off a place and a mind. Also rhythm, amazing.
“She is forty. Aldred Leith, who has turned twenty, saw the
small foot and pretty shoe, the slim calf, the fold of soft material at the
knee. Her clothes were loose on her, from loss of weight. On a wrist incredibly
slender, a little watch slipped about with her movements. She wore no ring.”
P.77
-Such movements in the description, they are active, they
read like a film, again directing the eyes so deftly and lingering on the
details that bring all of the women in this book to life. These are the kinds
of dynamic physical descriptions that I could use.
“In scorched cities, girls were twirling and trilling, and giving
velvet glances, in spite of all they knew. They were laying roses on the tombs
of lovers.” P.98
-Concise way to elegantly acknowledge the irony of wartime
living. The tone and image catch right.
“He returned to the foul-smelling room, to its certainties,
with a sense of familiarity. Hardship is never quite alien. Alien was Brenda,
was Rita: women who had not rallied. His mind touched, an instant, on Audrey
Fellowes, who would have spring to assist him. And he set this illumination
aside for later study.” P.177
-I really like that Peter carries these women in his mind,
it mirrors what the narrative is asking me to do, and creates a sense of
accretion, of the piling up of the story, that it gathers weight and momentum
in the minds of the characters as well as the reader.
“'I went to the train with him, I didn’t usually do that.
Small, silly thing to be glad about. But one doesn’t always know what one will
be glad about, later on. Or sorry, or misremember.’” P.207
-And yet, this is exactly what’s important to be written
into each scene. I love that Aurora says this because it makes the art of the
telling this story, and of each of these characters stories, feel at once
difficult and easy. It lets them off the hook, in a sense, but still requires that we give
their action significance.
“The scrubby bark, coruscated, or the smooth angular pieces
like bone. Forms arched and grooved like a lobster, or humped like a whale.
Dark joints, to which foliage adhered like bay leaves in a stew. Pinecones, and
fronds of pine needles still flourished on the hacked branch. And the creatures
that inched or sped or wriggled our, knowing the game was up: slugs, pale
worms, tiny white grubs scurrying busily off as if to a destination. An undulant
caterpillar, and an inexorable thing with pincers. Or the slow slide of an
unhoused snail—the hodmedod, as they called him here—revisiting the lichens and
pigmentations and fungoid flakes that had clung to his only home—freckled growths
dusted, seemingly, with cocoa; red berries, globules of white wax. Wet earthy
smell, forest smell.” p.222
-Amazing poetic prose in general, particularly great way to
show familiarity in details and a knowing, of home, as Leith even acknowledges.
Surprising too. Same way that she describes people, there is movement, dynamism, aliveness.
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