unearths some literary gems.
[This weird but well-written mystery novel was sort of "screwball gothic."]
***
"My past life has come up before my eyes so often it's beginning to look like a non-stop revue."
***
She...walked towards him with short, rather plodding steps, as though she was crossing an expanse of suet pudding.
***
[Who Needs Context? dept.]
"Oh, if you're going to make a scene about pepper," Prudence said, "I'll oblige by leaving the room."
***
Talking to him was like discussing the scenery with a fish, or a bird.
***
He was a grocer, and his appearance suggested that his shop was very small, and that the articles wanted by customers could only be reached by ladder.
***
"We can't describe them," Smith said in a voice that whined on a high note, like the wind in a chimney.
[By the way, this Smith (the grocer) is paired up with a drinking buddy called Benson. One of them is obsessed with his hobby of astrology, and one with his hobby of numerology, and they are perpetually scoffing at each other's hobbies.]
***
[This silly tangent from the protagonist's eccentric 16-year-old sister is probably my favorite passage in the book.]
"Harry keeps saying [Maurice is] trying to get Father's money"[....]
"Harry seems to know a lot about crime. Let me try curling my lip. Do you suppose when people curl their lips it's convex or concave?" She went to the glass over the mantelpiece. "It looks queer both ways. If I curl it up towards my nose it's worse, don't you think? People in those books must look odd, most of the time. 'She curled her lip. Her lip twitched.' Oh, I twitch better than I curl. I'll practise that one. Do you really think I should be twitching and curling at Maurice?"
***
It was a good shop, smelling of incompatible foods.
***
"My mind's moving now like a circular saw. I'm not sure now what I'm cutting. It might be monotony. It might be the branch I'm sitting on."
***
[Also from Prudence, the 16-y.o.]
"I'm sure this doesn't happen to other people getting ready for parties."
***
Hester smiled as though her face was being worked by electricity, while she wondered if real people ever said By Jove.
***
[Prudence again]
She was so glad that he had gone that she forgot she couldn't tango.
***
