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Story Time
Dec. 9th, 2015 08:38 pmThe attics at Buckshaw are a vast, aerial underworld containing all platter, the castoffs, the debris, the dumpings, the sad dusty residue of all those who have lived and breathed in this house for centuries past.
Piled on top of the moldering prayer chair, for instance, upon which the terrible-tempered Georgina de Luce had once perched piously in her powdered periwig to hear the whispered confessions of her terrified children, was the crumpled wreckage of the home built glider in which her ill-fated grandson, Leopold, had launched himself from the parapets off the east wing scant seconds before coming to grief on the steel-hard, frozen ground of the visto, bringing to an abrupt end that particular branch of the family.
That's two VERY long sentences from The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches.
(Quoted from the the audiobook, so I may have misspelled or punctuated incorrectly.)
As a visual reader, one who creates vivid pictures in my mind constantly while reading, I had to listen to that second sentence four times before I could fully follow and understand what was being presented. First we're in an attic, then we're not in an attic and there's a lady with a wig, but then there's children around her, and they are afraid, presumably because she a witch, but she's taking confession which must be why it's called a confession chair, but then I don't know what a confession chair looks like as opposed to any other chair in the world, so now I'm stuck presuming that maybe it looks special but I don't know, so I question the image of the chair I have in my mind and hope I'm not too far off, but then she's not in the chair and we're back in the attic and there's a crumpled glider on it, but then we're talking about her grandson and not her children, but then we're on the roof, and then we're on the floor, and then we're looking at the HUGE family tree my own uncle sent to our household and I'm recalling how family tree branches just stopped, and then.....I think we're back in the attic.
Piled on top of the moldering prayer chair, for instance, upon which the terrible-tempered Georgina de Luce had once perched piously in her powdered periwig to hear the whispered confessions of her terrified children, was the crumpled wreckage of the home built glider in which her ill-fated grandson, Leopold, had launched himself from the parapets off the east wing scant seconds before coming to grief on the steel-hard, frozen ground of the visto, bringing to an abrupt end that particular branch of the family.
That's two VERY long sentences from The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches.
(Quoted from the the audiobook, so I may have misspelled or punctuated incorrectly.)
As a visual reader, one who creates vivid pictures in my mind constantly while reading, I had to listen to that second sentence four times before I could fully follow and understand what was being presented. First we're in an attic, then we're not in an attic and there's a lady with a wig, but then there's children around her, and they are afraid, presumably because she a witch, but she's taking confession which must be why it's called a confession chair, but then I don't know what a confession chair looks like as opposed to any other chair in the world, so now I'm stuck presuming that maybe it looks special but I don't know, so I question the image of the chair I have in my mind and hope I'm not too far off, but then she's not in the chair and we're back in the attic and there's a crumpled glider on it, but then we're talking about her grandson and not her children, but then we're on the roof, and then we're on the floor, and then we're looking at the HUGE family tree my own uncle sent to our household and I'm recalling how family tree branches just stopped, and then.....I think we're back in the attic.
