Descriptions Through Their Eyes

They say that the best description when writing a story comes through the character’s eyes as it opens a little window into the way the character perceives the world, enriching the story in more than one way. While reading People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, I came across an excellent example of this.

But before I get into that, a little background. This book is written from various points of view, which changes the way things like a city can feel or is shown. For example, a war-torn city is very different and presents different concerns and treatment to someone who is wealthy and educated versus someone who is poor and persecuted. (That’s the thing I love about point of view, suddenly you can have a completely different story.)

However, what I’d like to highlight is the difference between two of Brooks’s characters in how they view and perceive an older male character. What they notice and how they present it is very different. Here are the two examples:

Example 1: He was leaning on an ebony cane with a silver top. His hair too, was silver, rather long, brushed back from his forehead. He was wearing a dark velvet jacket with pale lemon piping on the lapels. At his neck he wore a bow tie in the nineteenth-century fashion, a long piece of patterned silk tied loosely under the collar. He had a little white rosebud for a boutonniere. (Page 95.)

Example 2: “He’s a trip, isn’t he? With the velvet suits and that whole last-century thing he’s got going on.” (Page 101.)

Who do you see?

Does the reader identify with one description more than the other? For me, yes. And in some ways, the second example helped reinforce what I had read earlier about this character because, honestly, the first go round didn’t create a clear mental image despite the specific description. I suppose I didn’t have an example ready-made in my head for me to attach this description to and say, “Ah, yes. I see.” In fact, the “lemon piping” distracts me from the overall image my mind is trying to create every single time I read the passage. Isn’t that odd?

Which one grabbed you? Which one created a sharper, more specific image? Which one quickly gave you the essence of the character?