Oh My Word

Years and years ago I read a book, randomly selected from I can't even remember where, and I loved every bit of its storyline, images, descriptions as much as I loved every bit of its writing and expression down to chapters, paragraphs, whole sentences, phrasing, even individual word usage. So impressed with this book was I that I deemed it my favorite book ever and since then I have read nothing to compare it with, in my opinion. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.

I have however forgotten the exact story since then and just how impressed I was with its writing - shame on me! So I picked it up a couple weeks ago and read it whole again. And Oh. My. Word. I fell in love with it all over again. And now I remember why I would not loan my copy of it out to anyone (save my sister) though I have recommended it a million times since. It is fantastic literature!

Some spots I made Josh sit and listen to me read aloud. One chapter in particular was so beautifully written, so touching, I welled with tears while I read it and contemplated copying THE ENTIRE CHAPTER here on my blog. I have dog eared specific lines I want to remember. So many more I stopped and read multiple times before moving on. I grinned to myself at the dry and intelligent humor that passed between characters. I even read this book in bed in place of the Book of Acts that I cannot seem to make myself finish - though I have no reason why not.

I love this book. I think I loved it more this second time around than I originally did the first time. Its makeup reads like poetry, like music. I would find myself reading it in a whisper just to hear the fluid rhythm of the words out loud. It is that well written to me. (And for the record, I hear its narration in a soothing country drawl - like a voice-over to a flashback in a movie) :)

My sister would not agree. I think the book bored her to tears. So it is hilarious to me how much I l-UH-ove it.

Oh my word. Such a good book. Not a light read. Certainly a compelling read, but not for the reason most novels are, which is often storyline alone. Some words I would use to describe it are deep, intelligent, witty, humorous, real, moving, beautiful, hearty, exciting. Oh my word. To look at its cover now makes me tilt my head with affection at the story and appreciation of the skill with which it was written.

Hats off to you, Leif Enger. Now hurry up and write another one that I can read with as much relish.

Speaking of words, here's my collection of great vocabulary from this second read through; I still don't know what a number of these words means, exactly, but that makes them no less easy on the ears: fictive, roweling, swath, penitent, weaponry, wager, lineage, jounced, bolster, stratagems, ingressed, atremble, grayscapes, small-souled, mawkish, unhusked, labyrinthine, villainy, locutions, heartsick, recitations, garrulous, bellicose, harbinger, dessicated, erstwhile, riven, frowzy, restive, heretofore, narcosis, denouement, abstruse, quietude, writ, craven, inconstancy, besmirched, exsiccated, mien, suet, pompadour, discordant, dissimilar, scattershot, wonderment, knave, glaciated, slog, upshot, delaminate, brigand, scapegrace, dispassionate, parlance, sump, disused, oftimes, foretoken, flummoxed, ratfink, ambrosial, cumbrous, soldierly, dizzying, inveterate, rapscallion, screel, transmissive, sunstruck, apostate, trenchate, artifice, captious, expunge, astraddle, souse, insensate, muzzy, undulate, noisome, piquancy, passable, grue, fomenting, jeopardous, insouciant, illumined, prescient, arcane, egress

I can't not share these, a few notable quotes, a sampling of the writing style...

• And now, because a story is told for all, an admonition to the mindsick: Be careful whom you choose to hate. The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough, if you could but see it, to melt you into jelly. Beware of those that reside beneath the shadow of the Wings.
• How much detail do you need? How much can you stand? I'll spare you beyond saying that when Dad got to school Monday morning he encountered a basement shin deep in evil, a swamp of soft terrors afloat and submerged, a furnace choked and dead, a smell to poise your wits for flight.
• Two whole days I dreamed with Swede about the things twenty-five dollars could buy. The bills were straight voltage, juicing all sorts of hallucinations.
• Normally I'd have taken a towel and wiped them [dishes] myself, but it's difficult to do productive work and fume simultaneously - the labor dissipates your righteous steam - so I stood glaring at the back of her little blonde head, which was tilted in thoughtful mien.
• I don't have the gift to aptly describe the rest of that evening, except to say it was a Christmas Eve beyond all gasping wishes...
• We were swept up, I tell you. Infected with something. Events seemed a wide water into which we'd stepped only to be yanked downstream toward some joyful end.
• She said, "I am zooo cold, dahlink," which gave me the giggles, which made my nose run faster, which lacking a hanky led to my desperate use of the remote corner of the uppermost quilt - well, not so remote- actually a corner fairly close to Swede, a horror that goosed our giggles into full-tilt hysterics, additional nonsense being thrown in whenever one of us could find the breath to speak.
• But we're fearful people, the best of us.
• I laughed in place of language.
• Is it fair to say that country [speaking of heaven] is more real than ours? That its stone is harder, its water more drenching - that the weather itself it alert and not just background? Can you endure a witness to its tactile presence? ... But it wasn't a sun. It was a city....still it threw light and warmth our sun could only covet. And unlike the sun, you could look straight into it - in fact you wished to, had to - and the longer you looked, the more you saw.
• What mortal creations are language and memory! And so I sound like a man making the most marginal sense - as if I were describing one of those dreams that seemed so genuine at the time.
  

For anyone that might ever read this book on account of my recommendation - My favorite scene happens on pages 17/18. That part, I remember vividly from my first read years ago. My favorite chapter is toward the end, aptly titled, "Be Jubilant, My Feet."

Oh my word, I love a good book.