Finally got back into reading after a busy couple of weeks and while I do love Gay’s story and writing style, I’m wondering if this is just a tad overdone:
He fell silent, watching her. He didn’t want to tell her that what she did for a living was part of the problem. Cora worked in a hospital in Little Rock, in the wing where patients were sent to die. It was Cora’s job to help them, and he guessed she was good at it, they all died, but he didn’t want any help from a professional. An aura of death hung about her like a plague. The smell of dying folks had soaked into her clothes, her lungs were saturated from breathing the last breaths of too many men, when she got up to cross the floor the unquiet dead she’d helped ferry across the Styx struggled up and followed obediently after her. She moved always encumbered by a legion of the invisible dead. (p. 19)
There are five phrases emphasizing that (he felt that) Cora carried the dead she helped around with her. It’s as if Gay couldn’t decide which description the most eloquent and couldn’t pare them down further than these five. There’s also the almost cliche’d use of "across the Styx" that maybe he liked too much to drop as it is simply another way of saying "dying."
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I find I’m actually not too bothered by it. He’s using three (or four, if you count the aura as visible) of the senses. Which just means it’s important and he’s trying to bury you in the feeling. I’d complain that it’s rather vanilla in comparison to the piece you excerpted earlier. And I question description-as-asides.
I’m still in admiration of Gay’s writing, both in style and story, but this one just struck me as a bit much.
And while I’m reading this book in spurts and have lost some of the continuity of involvement, it does seem that the big bang opening hasn’t quite been matched yet. I’m going to reserve judgment until I get back on track with the rhythm of reading.
That’s really a shame. I wonder sometimes if it’s just the state of the publishing world–that you have to have that big bang to get your foot in the door. Would be terrible if it’s true.