Shroud for a Nightingale P.D. James
P.D. James' typical sterling characters, plot, and finely-tuned setting are as present in this book as in her previous ones. What are especially present in Nightingale though are examples of perhaps her greatest literary talent, which is her ability to use and describe the subtle phenomena that are peppered in human existence. Take this excerpt from p. 70:
"The recently dead had their own mysterious charisma; not without reason did men talk in whispers in their presence."
On p. 143:
"This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?"
On p. 305:
"He was in that state of physical tiredness when the mind and body seem detached, the body, conditioned to reality, moving half consciously in the familiar physical world, while the liberated mind swings into uncontrolled orbit in which fantasy and fact show an equally ambiguous face."
No literary figure I've ever come across has done this as well as James. Whenever she drops one of these in her stories you know instantly the feeling or phenomenon she is describing. This only comes from a keen awareness of human nature and experience and it makes each one of her stories a pleasure to read, Shroud for a Nightingale included.
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