What cry a living thing can make will never approach the truth. A gull in fog, a coyote at night, the various keenings of uncivilized peoples, even a babe torn—the closest yet still as far from the truth as the distance from the brink to the abyss; there is no sound to match the tearing of the heart. The sound of asunder.
This gorgeous passage by the Nova Scotia writer Linda Little captures both the beauty of her prose and the poignancy of her tone in Scotch River, her second novel. (Little’s debut novel, Strong Hollow, was short-listed for several awards.)
Little manages a feat too rarely accomplished in literary fiction, which is to lace the pages with lovely phrases while at the same time compel you to turn them to find out what happens next. There are writers I admire in a stand-offish way, such as Michael Ondaatje, because their sentences gleam like jewels, but I never read...
Patricia Pearson is a journalist and author based in Toronto. She is author, most recently, of the novels Believe Me (Random House, 2005) and Playing House (Vintage, 2004).
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