Forbidden Fruit

A great book for writers is Jim Crace's collection of 'short fictions,' The Devil's Larder.

It's not a short story collection, although some could be the beginnings of a story or even a novel.  But some are complete in themselves, fictionalized essays on the objects of our desire.  None of them are titled.  My favorite involves a crab apple tree.

The owner of a farm watches a family trespass for a picnic, their children running up to the beautiful crab apple tree and tasting its fruit -- unforgettably bitter.  Then the narrator's thoughts turn to the lure of the tree, its fruit beautiful and bitter, a forbidden fruit, though he never uses the phrase.

His descriptive imagery is wonderful:  "creaky grandads," "unforgetting mouths," "flavours of deceit."

It's the "creaky granddads" who, in the fourth paragraph, set up the story's conclusion.  They claim the bitter crab apple grew after "a bolt of lightening souring the ground where lovers from opposing villages were kissing."

But he keeps the story moving as the children reach the tree.  Instead of writing the prosaic, "I didn't warn them," he writes:  

I watched them reach up to the lowest fruit and hesitate, a warning trapped behind my teeth.

Does that strike you as too literary?  He follows it with three short sentences of great immediacy that impel the reader forward:  

At first they touched but did not pick.  This surely must be theft.  Such tempting treats could not be free.

Doesn't the rhythm of those sentences evoke romping children reminding themselves of adult morality?  Of course the fruit is not free, in a way the children do not suspect.

The narrator's feelings meld with the children's:

My mouth was watering.  I saw the children shake their heads and spit.  They'd never pass a crab again without their unforgetting mouths flooding with distaste . . . [from] the tree that had betrayed their hopes.

His descriptive powers are so pure and intense that the Garden of Eden story remains in the back of one's mind, never intrudes into this event in the English countryside.  He has warded off Adam and Eve with those lovers from opposing villages:

Sometimes, in a certain mood, I walk down to the bottom fences of my land where my ever-open gate onto the road gives access to picnickers and find myself a little sad that no small child is running full of hope across the field.  Then the small child that still survives in me shoves me in the back.  I walk across to taste the fruit of that one crab for myself.  I never swallow any of the flesh, of course.  I simply plunge my teeth into the tempting bitterness.  Even after all these years -- misled, misled, misled again -- I like to test the flavours of deceit.  And I still find myself surprised by its malicious impact in my mouth.  It's bittersweet and treacherous, the kiss of lovers from opposing villages.

Our human predicament, beautifully summed up in a paragraph.

Great Openings

Great writing is efficient.  The opening pages of Wally Lamb's novel, I Know this Much Is True, introduce his protagonist, establish the tone of the novel, set up conflict, create voice, define setting and establish pace.

His first sentence defines the setting and creates suspense -- what is Thomas going to sacrifice?

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.

Bye the end of that first paragraph, Lamb has established both tone and pace.  We know this is going to be a literary novel, illuminating the everyday life of its characters.  Mundane details will not be overlooked in favor of action.  

Mrs. Theresa Fenneck, the children's librarian, was officially in charge that day because the head librarian was at an all-day meeting in Hartford.  She approached my brother and told him he'd have to keep his voice down or else leave the library. She could hear him all the way up at the front desk.  There were other patrons to consider.

At this point we don't know the novel is going to be written in first person but we know there will be third person narration summarizing dialogue, a technique Lamb uses throughout.

The second paragraph establishes voice, the narrator:

Thomas and I had spent several hours together the day before.  Our Sunday afternoon ritual dictated that I sign him out of the state hospital's Settle Building, treat him to lunch, visit our stepfather or take him for a drive, and then return him to the hospital before suppertime.

The long second sentence conveys the narrator's boredom with this ritual; there is no caring, just ritual.

The following sentence introduces us to the conflict -

At a back booth at Friendly's, I'd sat across from my brother, breathing in his secondary smoke and leafing for the umpteenth time through his scrapbook of clippings on the Persian Gulf crisis.

- with the narrator's annoyance at "breathing in his secondary smoke."  Clearly, Thomas is a burden.

The first sentence of the next paragraph gives us an insightful look at the protagonist, Dominick, without a single word of physical description.

He [Thomas] was oblivious of my drumming fingers on the tabletop.  "Not to change the subject," I said, "But how's the coffee business?"  

Dominick is impatient, unwilling to engage in conversation about what concerns his brother, the first war in Iraq.

Later in the first chapter, we get more of Dominick's descriptive actions:

I stood there, arms crossed, fists tucked into my armpits.

Not hands, fists.

If she had kept yapping, I might have burst into tears.  Might have cold-cocked her.

Not talking, yapping.

Finally, at the end of the chapter, if the reader hasn't picked up the clues about Dominick's character and his conflict with his brother, there is this interior dialogue, Dominick's reaction to the doctor's disbelief that he won't approve his attempt to reattach his brother's hand.

Control:  that was the hot button that pushed my decision.  Suddenly, that gel-haired surgeon was our stepfather and every other bully and power broker that Thomas had ever suffered.  You tell him, Thomas, I thought.  You fight for your fucking rights!

By the close of this brief first chapter, we suspect that Dominick was another one of those bullies and that the action will revolve around his coming to terms with that fact, a great launch of a long novel that illuminates the souls of ordinary people.