Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

The moon was almost complete, its outline well defined, except for the blur on the

waving curve. The sky was cloudless, the air still warm, but when he reached the

fields it cooled slightly, taking on a fresher, sharper quality. The moon made it light

in the fields, and lent the grass a silver sheen, and the piebald hides of the cows

were clearly visible in this silvery light. The wood was a narrow black band beyond

the fields, growing taller and taller as Billy approached, until it formed a curtain

stretched out before him, and the top of the curtain appeared to touch the stars

directly above.

He climbed on to the stile and looked into the trees. It was dark on both sides of

the path, but above the path the foliage was thinner, and the light from the moon

penetrated and lit the way. Billy stepped down off the stile and entered the wood.

The trunks and branches lining the formed pillars and lintels, terraced doorways

leading into dark interiors. He hurried by them, glancing in, right and left. A scuffle

to his left. He side-stepped to the right and began to run, the pad of his feet and

the rasp of his breath filtering far into the trees. WO-HU-WO-HOOO. WO-HU-WO-

HOOO. He stopped and listened, trying to control his breathing. WO-HU-WO-

HOOO. Somewhere ahead; the long falter radiating back through the trees. Billy

linked his fingers, placed his thumbs together and blew into the split between

them. The only sound he produced was that of rushing air. He licked his lips and

tried again, producing a wheeze, which he swiftly worked up into a single hoot and

developed into a strident imitation of the tawny owl’s call. He listened. There was

no response, so he repeated it, this time working for the softer, more wavering

sound, by stuttering his breath into the sound chamber. And out it came, as clear

and as clean as a blowing of bubbles. His call was immediately answered. Billy

grinned and answered back. He started to walk again, and maintained contact with

the owl for the rest of the distance through the wood.

The farmhouse was in darkness…

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

It seemed December still possessed his garden. The ground was hard as iron, the

skirts of the dark cypress moved on the chill wind with a mournful rustle and there

were no green shoots on the roses as if, this year, they would not bloom. And not

on light in any of the windows, only, in the topmost attic, the faintest smear of

radiance on a pane, the thin ghost of a light on the verge of extinction.

The spaniel had slept a little, in her arms, for the poor thing was exhausted. But

now her grieving agitation fed Beauty’s urgency and, as the girl pushed open the

front door, she saw, with a thrust of conscience, how the golden door knocker was

thickly muffled in black crepe.

The door did not open silently, as before, but with a doleful groaning of the hinges

and, this time, onto perfect darkness. Beauty clicked her gold cigarette lighter; the

tapers in the chandelier had drowned in their own wax and the prisms were

wreathed with drifting arabesques of cobwebs. The flowers in the glass jars were

dead, as if nobody had the heart to replace them after she was gone. Dust,

everywhere; and it was cold. There was an air of exhaustion, of despair in the house

and, worse, a kind of physical disillusion, as if its glamour had been sustained by a

cheap conjuring trick and now the conjurer, having failed to pull the crowds, had

departed to try his luck elsewhere.

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream

milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the

immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy

leaves that clustered below.

The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the

needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal

mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind

would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and

groan like a cello.

It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold

brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green

shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would

often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and

brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted.

Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half

rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter

among the millions of needles.

There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village—little more

than a cluster of herdsmen’s dwellings—at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined

shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out

in the perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and

dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and

the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston

Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped

quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to

prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the

street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and

though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no

colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-

moustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on

the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING

YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own. Down

at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind,

alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a

helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a

bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol,

snooping into people’s windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the

Thought Police mattered.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

23 July 1970, the end of the afternoon. A cool breeze off the Channel, a mackerel sky

overhead and, far out, a column of sunlight falling onto a trawler as if God had

picked it out for some kind of blessing. The upper storeys of the Regency buildings

along the front sit above a gaudy rank of coffee houses and fish bars and knick-knack

shops with striped awnings selling 99s and dried seahorses in cellophane envelopes.

The names of the hotels are writ large in neon and weatherproof paint. The

Excelsior, the Camden, the Royal. The word Royal is missing an o.

Gulls wheel and cry. Two thousand people saunter along the prom, some carrying

towels and Tizer to the beach, others pausing to put a shilling in the telescope or to

lean against a balustrade whose pistachio-green paint has blistered and popped in a

hundred years of salt air. A gull picks up a wafer from a dropped ice cream and lifts

into the wind.

On the beach a portly woman hammers a windbreak into the sand with the heel of a

shoe while a pair of freckled twins build a fort from sand and lolly sticks. The

deckchair man is collecting rentals, doling out change from a leather pouch at his hip.

“No deeper than your waist,” shouts a father. “Susan? No deeper than your waist.”

The air on the pier is thick with the smell of engine grease and fried onions spooned

onto hot dogs. The boys from the ticket booth ride shotgun on the rubber rims of the

bumper cars, the contacts scraping and sparking on the live chicken wire nailed to

the roof above their heads. A barrel organ plays Strauss waltzes on repeat.

Nine minutes to five. Ozone and sea-sparkle and carnival licence. This is how it

begins.

A rivet fails, one of eight which should clamp the joint between two weight-bearing

girders on the western side of the pier. Five have sheared already in heavy January

seas earlier this year. There is a faint tremor underfoot as if a suitcase or a

stepladder has been dropped somewhere nearby.

No one takes any notice. There are now two rivets holding the tonnage previously

supported by eight. In the aquarium by the marina the dolphins turn in their blue

prison.

C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

There was no trace of the fog now. The sky became bluer and bluer, and now there were white

clouds hurrying across it from time to time. In the wide glades there were primroses. A light

breeze sprang up which scattered drops of moisture from the swaying branches and carried

cool, delicious scents against the faces of the travellers. The trees began to come fully alive. The

larches and birches were covered with green, the laburnums with gold. Soon the beech trees

had put forth their delicate, transparent leaves. As the travellers walked under them the light

also became green. A bee buzzed across their path.

The sky in the east was whitish by now and the stars were getting fainter - all except one very

big one low down on the eastern horizon. They felt colder than they had been all night. The

mice crept away again.

They walked to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down. The one big star had almost

disappeared. The country all looked dark grey, but beyond, at the very end of the world, the sea

showed pale. The sky began to turn red. They walked to ands fro more times than they could

count between the dead Aslan and the eastern ridge, trying to keep warm; and oh, how tired

their legs felt. Then at last, as they stood for a moment looking out towards they sea and Cair

Paravel (which they could now just make out) the red turned to gold along the line where the

sea and the sky met and very slowly up came the edge of the sun. At that moment they heard

from behind them a loud noise - a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a

giant's plate.

The rising of the sun had made everything look so different - all colours and shadows were

changed that for a moment they didn't see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table

was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no

Aslan.

Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard— a “swept” yard that was never swept— where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.

Arthur Conan Doyle – ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a balance gap like the mouth of a cave, there was the den…

Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faints, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. The most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbor. At the father end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside which on a three-legged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon his knees, staring into the fire.

Laurie Lee – ‘Cider with Rosie’

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were rival ancients and lived on each other’s

nerves, and their perpetual enmity was like mice in the walls and absorbed much

of my early days. With their sickle-bent bodies, pale pink eyes, and wild wisps of

hedgerow hair, they looked to me the very images of witches and they were also

much alike. In all their time as such close neighbours they never exchanged a

word. They communicated instead by means of boots and brooms – jumping on

floors and knocking on ceilings. They referred to each other as ‘Er-Down-Under’

and ‘Er-Up-Atop, the Varmint’; for each to the other was an airy nothing, a local

habitation not fit to be named.

‘Er-Down-Under, who lived on our level, was perhaps the smaller of the two, a

tiny white shrew who came nibbling through her garden, who clawed squeaking

with gossip at our kitchen window, or sat sucking bread in the sun’ always

mysterious and self-contained and feather-soft in her movements. She had two

names, which she changed at will according to the mood of her day. Granny

Wallon was her best, and stemmed, we were told, from some distinguished

alliance of the past. Behind this crisp and trotting body were certainly rumours of

noble blood. But she never spoke of them herself. She was known to have raised

a score of children. And she was known to be very poor. She lived on cabbage,

bread, and potatoes – but she also made excellent wines.

Granny Wallon’s wines were famous in the village, and she spent a large part of

her year preparing them. The gathering of the ingredients was the first of the

mysteries. At the beginning of April she would go off with her baskets and work

round the fields and hedges, and every fine day till the end of summer would find

her somewhere out in the valley. One saw her hobbling home in the evening,

bearing her cargoes of crusted flowers, till she had buckets of cowslips,

dandelions, elder-blossom crammed into every corner of the house. The elder-

flower, drying on her kitchen floor, seemed to cover it with a rancid carpet, a

crumbling rime of grey-green blossom fading fast in a dust of summer. Later the

tiny grape-cluster of the elderberry itself would be seething in purple vats, with

daisies and orchids thrown in to join it, even strands of the dog-rose bush.

Anita Desai – ‘Games at Twilight’

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

It was still too hot to play outdoors. They had their tea, they had been washed

and had their hair brushed, and after the long day of confinement in the house

that was not cool but at least protection from the sun, the children strained to get

out. Their faces were red and bloated with the effort, but their mother would not

open the door, everything was still curtained and shuttered in a way that stifled

the children, made them feel that their lungs were stuffed with cotton wool and

their noses with dust and if they didn’t burst out into the light and see the sun

and feel the air, they would choke.

They faced the afternoon. It was too hot. Too bright. The white walls of the

veranda glared stridently in the sun. The bougainvillea hung about it, purple and

magenta, in livid balloons. The garden outside was like a tray made of beaten

brass, flattened out on the red gravel and the stony soil in all shades of metal –

aluminum, tin, copper and brass. No life stirred at this arid time of day – the bird

still drooped, like dead fruit, in the papery tents of the trees; some squirrels lay

limp on the wet earth under the garden tap. The outdoor dog lay stretched as if

dead on the veranda mat, his paws and eras and tail all reaching out like dying

travelers in search of water. He rolled his eyes at the children – two white

marbles rolling in the purple sockets, begging for sympathy – and attempted to

lift his tail in a wag but could not. It only twitched and lay still.

William Golding – ‘Lord of the Flies’

Why is this an effective example of descriptive writing?

The shore was fledged with palm trees. These stood or leaned or reclined against

the light and their green feathers were a hundred feet up in the air. The ground

beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the

upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.

Behind this was the darkness of the forest proper and the open space of the scar.

Ralph stood, one hand against a grey trunk, and screwed up his eyes against the

shimmering water. Out there, perhaps a mile away, the white surf flinked on a

coral reef, and beyond that the open sea was dark blue. Within the irregular arc

of coral the lagoon was still as a mountain lake—blue of all shades and shadowy

green and purple. The beach between the palm terrace and the water was a thin

stick, endless apparently, for to Ralph’s left the perspectives of palm and beach

and water drew to a point at infinity; and always, almost visible, was the heat.

He jumped down from the terrace. The sand was thick over his black shoes and

the heat hit him. He became conscious of the weight of clothes, kicked his shoes

off fiercely and ripped off each stocking with its elastic garter in a single

movement. Then he leapt back on the terrace, pulled off his shirt, and stood there

among the skull-like coconuts with green shadows from the palms and the forest

sliding over his skin. He undid the snake-clasp of his belt, lugged off his shorts and

pants, and stood there naked, looking at the dazzling beach and the water.