I think they get fatter but shallower.

Isn't that one of the reasons though, why McEwan's so successful, that he doesn't pad out his novels unnecessarily...it's pure storyline...he makes it look so simple...brilliant.

Never Let me Go - I agree that the prose was 'mundane' in a way, but I honestly think the intention was to show that these children's lives, under such terrible circumstances and with no future, was very mundane, boring and ordinary. It turned sci fi on its head to illustrate how easily something like that could happen.

But I do agree it could be tedious to read at times - I only defend it now because when I finished I thought - so what - but then it kept coming back to me for days after... I kept thinking about the 'teachers' who'd colluded and kept seeing the final scene with litter blowing through the field. It was so simple but so heartbreaking.

Sarah

Geoff,

Having just had a submission rejected because it was considered overwritten, I’d steer clear of deliberately using it as a technique. Even if the execution works, it might be misinterpreted.

Cheers, Grinder

I agree with geofmorr that Henry James doesn't keep on saying the same thing over and over - he's extrapolating: considering a situation from every angle. So it's not quite the same. although it could seem like it. I suppose the cinematic eqivalent would be a number of slow pans around an object from different angles.

A lot of modern writing seems to be making the same point over and over for dramatic or humorous effect, e.g.:

'He walked through through the doorway. When I say 'walked', it would perhaps be more accurate to say he hurled himself at great speed from one space into another.Except he didn't do it by himself.It wasn't by his own volition. He was helped. Well, not exactly helped, either. Somebody had shoved him - some aggressive force had placed a foot in the small of his back and ....'

etc,etc.

It really does make you think they are being paid by the word. I notice it more with journalists, though, than with novelists and they often have to fill a weekly column.

I hate it, but as someone else suggested it's excusable in a novel or short story about a character who is a borderline sufferer from an obsessive disorder. I think Ruth Rendell does it, using italics.

Sheila