For me, The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera; On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-Ocean Vuong; Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The most tragic, painful, human suffering can be presented and these writers present it in the most excruciatingly beautiful prose.
On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-“A woman stands on the shoulder of a dirt road begging, in a tongue made obsolete by gunfire, to enter the village where her house sits, has sat for decades. It is a human story. Anyone can tell it. Can you tell? Can you tell the rain has grown heavy, its keystrokes peppering the blue shawl black?”
What is the beauty for you?
There’s something about Catherynne Valente for me. When it doesn’t quite hit for me, I have to be in the right mood to enjoy her style, but a few of her books absolutely destroy me.
When I first read Deathless, I kept reading lines aloud to my ex’s family, who I was on vacation with at the time. I could barely make it through a page.
I still think about “You look like a winter’s night, I could sleep inside the cold of you” a few times a week in the winter. That and “when you love someone, you don’t make them tell war stories”. It might be time for a reread.