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when dialogue works

This excerpt from Drowning Ruth (Christina Schwartz) is an excellent example what dialogue can do. All you really need to know before you read it is this: set on a rural farm, before the first world war; the narrator is a young woman who is looking after a mother who has been sickly for a long time. There's a younger, prettier, much loved sister called Mathilda.

I believe this is the first time Joseph is mentioned in the novel, and still: you know pretty much everything there is to know. Not about the relationship between Joseph and the narrator, but about the relationship between the narrator and her mother.

The masterful touch here is the narrator's lack of verbal response to her mother's cruelty, her turning away to look outside. That tells us she is not surprised by her mother's assessment, or capable of showing anger. So you've got to wonder at somebody who is so good at sublimating. Where does all the anger go, and what happens when there's too much of it? That's what this novel is about, for the most part.

May 18, 2005 10:44 AM

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