Weekly write 12: People-watching
The following extract is from 'The Unseen' by Roy Jacobsen. This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker International prize 2017. It shows a family's life, surviving, farming, growing up with their animals on their own small island off the coast of Norway. Here is a short extract of Ingrid observing her parents:
From the parlour, it sounded as though they were having a normal conversation. The front door banged. Ingrid got up and from the parlour window saw her parents walking side by side across the spring-brown meadows. They were talking. Her father had his arm around her mother, her head lay on his shoulder, they were strolling hand in hand, then let go, now her mother walked with her arms crossed, her father with his hands in his pockets, they stopped and talked and looked around and went on and vanished. Ingrid hadn't noticed anything unusual, or alarming, neither had she seen anything she didn't understand, but she had seen something she would never forget.
There is a deceptive simplicity about this prose. It partly achieves its charge through silent observation from a particular perspective, and from the withholding of comment. The focus of the last sentence shifts to comment, with narrative hindsight, on the longer term effect on the observer herself.
Choose your own perspective from which to observe people whose voices you can hear partially or not at all. You might do this live, or from a photograph, or a remembered scene you can clearly visualise, or even a historical or fictional scene you can imagine. The scenes might be short or long, interrupted or complete. High windows, shop windows, cafes, libraries, trains, waiting rooms - even TV screens themselves - all provide good opportunities. Try to capture something of people's feelings and relationships from close observation of their actions.
You might also wish to reflect on the significance to you, at this time, of having chosen what you did.
From the parlour, it sounded as though they were having a normal conversation. The front door banged. Ingrid got up and from the parlour window saw her parents walking side by side across the spring-brown meadows. They were talking. Her father had his arm around her mother, her head lay on his shoulder, they were strolling hand in hand, then let go, now her mother walked with her arms crossed, her father with his hands in his pockets, they stopped and talked and looked around and went on and vanished. Ingrid hadn't noticed anything unusual, or alarming, neither had she seen anything she didn't understand, but she had seen something she would never forget.
There is a deceptive simplicity about this prose. It partly achieves its charge through silent observation from a particular perspective, and from the withholding of comment. The focus of the last sentence shifts to comment, with narrative hindsight, on the longer term effect on the observer herself.
Choose your own perspective from which to observe people whose voices you can hear partially or not at all. You might do this live, or from a photograph, or a remembered scene you can clearly visualise, or even a historical or fictional scene you can imagine. The scenes might be short or long, interrupted or complete. High windows, shop windows, cafes, libraries, trains, waiting rooms - even TV screens themselves - all provide good opportunities. Try to capture something of people's feelings and relationships from close observation of their actions.
You might also wish to reflect on the significance to you, at this time, of having chosen what you did.
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