Francine Prose and George Saunders ~ extraordinary writers

Francine Prose has the perfect last name. I wonder if her middle name is Evocative. Francine Evocative Prose. Anyway, I feel inspired when I read her prose. Just finished her novel Goldengrove. The summer Nico is thirteen, her sister Margaret drowns, and Nico, Mom, and Dad grieve, each in his own way. Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from narrator Nico:

My mother never got a harpsichord. Maybe she forgot, or maybe the trouble she’d had trying to pronounce it had dampened her desire. Now, at meals, she played with her food, extracting one shred of cabbage from the tangle of coleslaw, one curl of pasta from the mac and cheese. Then she’d lose interest and grow abstract, listening, as if a voice, inaudible to my father and me, was calling from another room. A dim gleam, sort of fish-tank glow, would flicker in her eyes, and, waving her fork like a baton, she’d say something like, “I’ve just figured out the whole thing about Mozart.” [page 175 in my edition]

The family’s fragility is palpable throughout this novel.

Also recently had a George Saunders collection of short stories home from the library. Tenth of December is a great introduction to this imaginative writer, satirist extraordinaire. Innovative formats such as diary entries and corporate memos are perfect settings for his pearls of pointed humor. Some stories I chose not to finish because of violent content, but generally I enjoyed how much fun Saunders seemed to be having.

Francine Prose and George Saunders—two writers who inspired me this summer to be a better writer.