Dec
9
9
Jane Allsop was abducted when she was fifteen, and nobody noticed.
—Tessa Hadley, From “An Abduction” in Bad Dreams and Other Stories
About
Poets think in lines, prose writers in sentences; the best of both work from sound to sense, with an ear for the music in their compositions. S for Sentence celebrates lyricism in prose, the play and craft at work in the artful sentence. We post a sentence a month along with comments by a guest writer on the craft that shapes it, on what makes it great. In one or two sentences.—Pearl Abraham, Editor
Grace Paley once said that first lines often emerge only after the last line has been written. The power of this point of entry is in the punchline: the abduction of a teenage child is hook enough, but the compression of the final clause, delivered through the negative in "nobody" and echoed in "noticed," highlights the real tragedy of this story. The most formative event of plain Jane's life occurs and not even Jane herself considers its significance, not for another fifty years anyway.
—Pearl Abraham is the author of, most recently, Animal Voices, Mineral Hum
—Pearl Abraham is the author of, most recently, Animal Voices, Mineral Hum