V is for Visual

Just finished reading Sarah Addison Allen's First Frost. I love Sarah's books, and this one was one of my favorites.

Sarah breaks a number of writing rules. One that I learned early on is every point of view (POV) character needs to have a character arc, meaning that every POV character needs to learn, change and grow by the end of the book. First Frost has several POV characters, including the apple tree, and I'm pretty sure that a majority of the characters don't really change or learn--including the tree.

Sarah also often falls into the trap of "telling, not showing," but her telling is often so beautiful, I don't care. And her writing is so visual, it makes me want to pack my suitcase for a trip to North Carolina.

Here are some of my favorite lines.

She'd wanted the attention, she'd wanted more people to know her gift as if the more people who knew the more real it would be.

But Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away, that when you are abandoned as a child, you are never able to forget that people are capable of leaving, even if they never do.

She'd left her hometown of Bascon when she was eighteen, burning bridges with the fire of her resentment.

He was so think it was like pushing at something pliable, like a bendy straw.

There was something about her that was just slightly west of center making her the odd one out in her group, the one gotten mad at the most and excommunicated for days on end for mysterious mean-girl reasons.

Bay could barely remember him now, the edges of his existence corroding like faxed paper.

Claire had once told Bay that the mere fact that someone wanted to see the biggest event in their life meant they weren't concentrating on what was good about everyday.

He was a fat man, but his movements were small and birdlike, his elbows always held closely to his sides, his footsteps clicky and dainty.

But somehow, it's the real stories that are the hardest to tell.

Giving up, especially now with all these doubts, would feel like conceding that her gift really was fiction, a belief contingent upon how well she sold it.

It had taken her a long time to realize that a prison sometimes isn't a prison at all. Sometimes it's simply a door you assumed is locked because you've never tried to open it.

The autumn light was slanted and orange, like the noontime sun had fallen to the ground somewhere far away in the flat distance.

Feeling frustrated because, no matter how hard she tried, she knew she couldn't catch someone who didn't know they were falling.