Carson McCullers has a way with words.
I still tend to believe that the above is where the natural talent displays itself, and the skill is learned through study and reading. In this novel, her first, there is an obvious extraordinary ability to provide setting in a minimalist manner, and yet it appears complete. There is no overuse of adjectives, and little use of metaphor and simile so that the language is straightforward and yet gives us the image without extraneous detail. This sentence stopped me cold:
The sky was a wonderful blue. (p. 136)
Beautiful, wonderful, nice–these are not adjectives a writer is supposed to use because they are abstract, vague. Had McCullers’ written The sky was a beautiful blue, it would have been a fairly useless sentence. But the word wonderful in this context is unusual. It employs more of a feeling of joy and brightness that gives the sentence more meaning. This feeling is vital to this section of the plot because it does not foreshadow the near-tragedy that happens in this setting.
Nice twist, eh? This is skill.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology