What book has the best imagery? characters?

[Chilly]

I want to get a good idea of how authors manage to write great scenes of description and/or create perfectly human characters. So I thought I would read books from authors that are known to do these things well. I want to find books that have achieved one or the other (or both) and any help would be greatly appreciated.

[lichtrausch]

Murakami Haruki. His characters from Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore are like friends to me.

[kelby_lake]

Great description in Lolita

[PeterL]

The best characterization of a main character was done by George McDonald Fraser in the Flashman series. Those were written in the first person, so the technique requires the reader to read through the descriptions to come up with a picture of the character. Flashman certainly was a human seeming character.

Description is a different matter. There is simple description, and many authors do a good job at that. Then there is description that moves the story along, and few authors are all that good at this. Hemingway did a reasonably good job, as did L. Sprague de Camp. One problem on this is that some authors try to make the scenery allegorical; Fitzgerald for one. The recent writers of Fantasy are some of the worst, because they insert many pages for no apparent reason.

I just thought of E. A. Poe; his description was usually excellent, and it fit the story without wasting space, except in "The Domain of Arnheim" and "Lendour's Cottage".

[Veva]

I felt that Styron's Sophy was a great depiction of humanity itself. :)

[emily00]

I want to get a good idea of how authors manage to write great scenes of description and/or create perfectly human characters. So I thought I would read books from authors that are known to do these things well. I want to find books that have achieved one or the other (or both) and any help would be greatly appreciated.


You could do far worse than read 'A House for Mr Biswas' by VS Naipaul. It seems to 'fit the bill' both in terms of credible characterisation and excellent use of descriptive detail to evoke both setting and character.

Or read some Dickens...his descriptions are masterly, but he did not set out to be realistic in his depictions; they are brilliant caricatures. Look at his description of Miss Havisham in Chapter 8 of 'Great Expecatiions'. Fantastic.