So, the writing in this one:
When I woke, there was sunlight dancing on the ceiling in a billowing net, water-wrinkles that overlapped the narrow rectangle of brightness that spilt between the curtains. The whitewashed walls looked faintly green, like the flesh of an apple, marred here and there with solid froth of damp. Outside a bird whistled over and over again as if it was calling a name.
This author really likes her similys.
And the story is told through the perspective of a teenage boy who has a whole lot of time to take in his surroundings:
But perhaps, after all, she was right. There was something in the silence of the old house, the low rooms filled with steady autumn sunlight and the still order of the workshop, that loosened the dark knots inside me. Day after day went by, until the place wasn´t new or strange to me any more; then week after week ... I learnt things by heart: the crinkling reflections on my ceiling the gappy seams in the patchwork quilt on my bed, the different creak of each tread under my foot when I came downstairs. Then there was the workshop, the gleam of the tiles around the stove, the saffron-and-earth scent of tea, the opalescent gloop of well-mixed paste in a glass jar ... The hours passed slowly, full of small, solid details; at home, in the busyness of farm life, I´d never had the time to sit and stare, or pay attention to the way a tool looked, or how well it was made, before I used it. Here the clock dredged up seconds like stones and dropped them again into the pool of the day, letting each ripple widen before the next one fell.
Yeah, I´m not biggest fan of this purple prose writing and, the main character being somewhere in his teens, it doesn´t ring true to being the voice of a teenager.
As for the main character himself: He might be a Gary Stu, I´m not exactly sure yet. But there has been a lot of fainting so far. A LOT of fainting.
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