Is Sheri Tepper not one of the most compelling novelists around? I'm beyond page 418 and into the last fifth of
The Visitor, and though I've seen some things I intuited come to pass, I still have no idea where she's leading me, fundamentally. So much yet to discover. How delicious.
Two excerpts to demonstrate two things I appreciate about her:
1. Opening sentence.
Picture this: A mountain splintering the sky like a broken bone, its western precipice plummeting onto jumbled scree.
Take-your-breath away writing.
2. The healer's response to the demon's effort to distinguish between miracles, which he believes in, and magic, which he doesn't.
"There is no difference at all," said Galenor. "Except that people allow themselves to believe an event if it's called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it's called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstasy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts...."
Truths summed up succinctly, and sometimes subtly pointed bidirectionally at camps with opposing points of view.
Haloscan:
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Blogger:
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