Darn you, unclear pronoun usage!
Feb. 5th, 2008 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoopbeckSo! Those of you on my flist who enjoy grammar and reading and whatnot, want to help me parse this paragraph?
I've spent the last three days trying to get past this bit of the book, but it's driving me crazy. I know it's just bad editing, but really.
The Book: Anne Perry's The Sins of the Father, a mystery novel set in the Victorian era.
What's Going On: Hester Latterly, who had joined Florence Nightingale to nurse wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, has recently taken a nursing job with the lovely Farraline family in Scotland. Her assignment: to get the ailing mother Mary from Edinburgh to London and back. At this point in the book, she has just met the Farralines, including her charge, and is sitting down to a meal with the family.
The Problem Paragraph: "Hester took her seat and the first course was served. Conversation was polite, and generally meaningless; it served the purpose for which it was intended, to convey goodwill without costing any thought or distracting from the meal. Discreetly Hester looked around at their faces, which had so much in common and which circumstance and character had stamped so differently. The only ones not born Farraline were Deirdre and Mary. Where they were slender and fair and well above average height, she was small and dark and inclined to stockiness. Yet there was a fierce inner concentration in her face, a sense of controlled excitement, which gave her a warmth the others lacked. She answered when civility required it, but she did not generate any remarks. Her own thoughts apparently consumed her."
Who she? Who her? Not Hester, who is not stocky, small, or dark. Not Deirdre or Mary, because according to that sentence they are both "slender and fair and well above average height." Not sisters Eilish or Oonagh. Not the servants or the children. WHO IS THIS MYSTERY WOMAN?!
ETA: Apparently it was Deirdre, who, upon closer inspection, was previously described as having dark hair and being small. Why, Anne Perry, did you describe her as being tall and fair only two pages later?! Why make a point of it? WHY MUST YOU TORMENT ME WITH YOUR LACK OF EDITING?
Mom blames the author's troubled past. I blame my mother for getting me hooked into a badly written mystery series with like a million books. :\
I've spent the last three days trying to get past this bit of the book, but it's driving me crazy. I know it's just bad editing, but really.
The Book: Anne Perry's The Sins of the Father, a mystery novel set in the Victorian era.
What's Going On: Hester Latterly, who had joined Florence Nightingale to nurse wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, has recently taken a nursing job with the lovely Farraline family in Scotland. Her assignment: to get the ailing mother Mary from Edinburgh to London and back. At this point in the book, she has just met the Farralines, including her charge, and is sitting down to a meal with the family.
The Problem Paragraph: "Hester took her seat and the first course was served. Conversation was polite, and generally meaningless; it served the purpose for which it was intended, to convey goodwill without costing any thought or distracting from the meal. Discreetly Hester looked around at their faces, which had so much in common and which circumstance and character had stamped so differently. The only ones not born Farraline were Deirdre and Mary. Where they were slender and fair and well above average height, she was small and dark and inclined to stockiness. Yet there was a fierce inner concentration in her face, a sense of controlled excitement, which gave her a warmth the others lacked. She answered when civility required it, but she did not generate any remarks. Her own thoughts apparently consumed her."
Who she? Who her? Not Hester, who is not stocky, small, or dark. Not Deirdre or Mary, because according to that sentence they are both "slender and fair and well above average height." Not sisters Eilish or Oonagh. Not the servants or the children. WHO IS THIS MYSTERY WOMAN?!
ETA: Apparently it was Deirdre, who, upon closer inspection, was previously described as having dark hair and being small. Why, Anne Perry, did you describe her as being tall and fair only two pages later?! Why make a point of it? WHY MUST YOU TORMENT ME WITH YOUR LACK OF EDITING?
Mom blames the author's troubled past. I blame my mother for getting me hooked into a badly written mystery series with like a million books. :\
