And while there is no straightforward answer to why writers drink, Laing explores the causes in admirable detail and astonishingly good prose – incisive, powerful, illuminating – that rivals the output of the authors she is writing about.
Robinson's deft prose-writing skills and illuminating defense of faith make her a truly unique voice.
These are illuminating about social life, as are the prose writings of Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus, especially his Characters.
With its intense yet informal prose, wealth of historical material and illuminating textual analyses, the book paints a vivid picture of Elizabethan England and Shakespeare's place in it.
The big book index ReprintsTwo things raise this book from a prosaic work of social commentary into an illuminating piece of contemporary fiction: Mr Aslam's arresting prose that quietly and eloquently opens up the heart of Shamas and Kaukab's family, and the author's courage in questioning the more outrageous laws that are enacted in Islam's name.
Practice in producing economical prose enabled her later to write lively and illuminating studies of a bicycling suffragette relation in My Aunt Edith (1966) and, in two books about the village of Rivington in Lancashire, an autobiographical account of the community where she spent all her married life.
And, presumably, he really, really wouldn't care for this article, which will unearth a few of the illuminating nuggets nestled within that forthcoming portrait of the scribe who died in 2010, leaving behind a legacy of celebrated prose and an enigmatic persona that is, apparently, immortal.
Don Paterson's new prose work is learned, intensely reflective, shot through with illuminating perceptions and sometimes baffling and sometimes maddening.
Schulman's account of the Carter years is particularly illuminating in a book of shrewd historical analysis and clear anecdotal prose.
"In elegant, unfussy prose, Marozzi manages to be both compendious and full of illuminating detail, both authoritative and evocative.
