Great Descriptive Paragraphs and Lawrence Durrell

It is one thing to run off a paragraph in warp speed time, but sometimes it is obvious that it has been written like that.

I don't want that for my novel, I want to be able to produce a good descriptive paragraph, one that is filled with interest, capture the reader's imagination and fill a page without waffle.

My goal is to go steady and infill where required.

When we were emigrating to Cyprus, I was given the book The Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell. This book was definately not written in warp speed and when reading it, it has a relaxed almost lazy feel to it at times.

A snippet from a write up of the author by Kingsley Martin/ New Statesman states:

"He writes like an artist, as well as a poet: he remembers colour and landscape..."

It has taken me a long time to digest the book and to appreciate the contents. Two reasons why I have now read this book three times:

The first being it was the story of his experiences on Cyprus between 1953 and 1956. At first he arrived as a visitor, he then set up home and became a teacher. He took a post as Press Advisor to a government coping with armed rebellion. The story he writes is harrowing and at times amusing, it is full of historical events of the island I now call home. There was so much to take in that it had to be re-read.

The second reason is that, as the quote above states, he writes like an artist...
Yes he does and that is my problem, I read it and he describes something, but for me it is too much to absorb, he almost describes the description. It is beautiful but overwhelming.
I cannot pick one sentence but I just could not read the book cover to cover and say, that was a good book. It was a great book, but left me with the need to go back and read what I had skimmed over because I found it heavy going. Then I had to absorb the description to understand what he was writing about.

When I did go back, three times, I would say it is a book I enjoyed, the story was enlightening, sad and one book I will not part with, but...

I am concious of that... but and I do not want to leave my reader with one with my book.

On mentioning this to a friend, he said "You will always have a 'but' reader, stop worrying and write".

So I will take his advise, apologise to Lawrence Durrell for being a 'but' reader and keep climbing toward my goal.