This sounds positively dreadful, especially all the overwriting. It's obvious that the author was trying to evoke some imagery, but it ended up sounding awkward and like a particularly bad case of purple prose.
My face was frozen in horror when reading the examples, but I literally made a strangled sound when I came to this: "her hands reached the solid of his arms".
Yep, I agree. She seemed to try really hard to make a point about something - I'm not even sure quite what that point is, although the book blurbs/reviews suggest things like loss and the fragility of life blah blah blah
I heartily agree. My mom and I recently drove from Florida to North Carolina and being fans of books set in this time thought it would make the drive easier if we listened to the book tape. Yeah, not. We couldn't finish it. The overwriting was so annoying. And the random sex Frankie has was just so out of the blue and it didn't help the plot at all. I have to give the reader credit though for changing her voice for the characters, but it just wasn't what we thought it was going to be either.
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My face was frozen in horror when reading the examples, but I literally made a strangled sound when I came to this: "her hands reached the solid of his arms".
Argh.
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When I think of journalists in that time frame, "slow" is not the adjective that comes to mind.
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The constant reference to jazz seems like trying way too hard to give a feel for the period.
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