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“... the main altar was a blaze of lights, and an apotheosis of baroque ornamentation with its twisted lamps. Salomonic columns, chubby angels, scrolls, escutcheons and riding high above the Churrugueresque extravaganza the 'Moor-slayer' in full panoply.”
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“Grey mist hanging low over the water; the sky blue-black with only an occasional star. Here and there a cluster of dim lights showing a tiny village; sometimes a coconut palm disentangled from the fog and dipping ghostly branches into the river; mangroves crouching against the bank like sinister beasts. Down in the cabin, heat that is intolerable; a thousand imprisoned mosquitoes preying ravenously on new flesh and blood; narrow beds creaking hoarsely with every movement; a baby crying peevishly, monotonously. On deck, silence, and the soft chill of the fog. Then, suddenly, the blast of a ship's siren, a blast like the shriek of a creature in pain, a shriek three times repeated, and dying away to leave a silence deeper than before.”
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“I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.”
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“Here you will see a Pekinese pagoda made of fresh and crackly peanut brittle —there a snow-white marshmallow igloo —there a toothsome pink nougat in the Florentine manner, rich and delicious with embedded nuts. Yonder rears a clean pocket-size replica of heraldic Warwick Castle-yonder drowses a nausey old nance. . . . And there a hot little hacienda, a regular enchilada conqueso with a roof made of rich red tomato sauce, barely lifts her long-lashed lavender shades on the soul of old Spanish days. . . .”
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“Above his head, fat geese were hanging from spiked bars, the hooks sunk into bleeding wounds in their long, stiff necks, while their huge bellies, reddish beneath a fine down, ballooned out obscenely between their linen-white tails and wings. Also hanging from the bar were grey rabbits, their legs parted as though in readiness for some gigantic leap, their ears flying flat, with a tuft of white tail, and their heads, with sharp teeth and dim eyes, grinning with the grin of death. On the counter plucked chickens displayed their fleshy breasts, stretched taut on the spit; pigeons, packed tightly together on wicker trays, seemed to have the soft skin of newborn babies; ducks, with rougher skin, splayed out their webbed feet; and three magnificent turkeys, shadowed with blue like a clean-shaven face …”
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Ian’s 2025 Year in Books
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