Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

I decided to read the first chapter, "Brownies", because I was once a Girl Scout and thought I might be able to relate. I think ZZ Packer is a great writer. I could visualize the troop and the camping trip because of her writing technique. The story was overflowing with detail and description.

On the second page, Packer describes Mrs. Margolin: "Arnetta said this from the very rear of the line, far away from Mrs. Margolin, who always strung our troop behind her like a brood of obedient ducklings. Mrs. Margolin even looked like a mother duck-she had hair cropped close to a small ball of a head, almost no neck, and huge, miraculous breasts." Her description made me laugh. I could picture this oddly shaped large woman leading along little girls in an effortless single-file line.

Sentences like this one, on page 7, give the story it's magic: " 'We can't let them get away with that,' Arnetta said, dropping her voice to a laryngitic whisper."

I particularly liked this description from page 8: "Her tone had an upholstered confidence that as somehow both regal and vulgar at once. It demanded a few moments of silence in its wake, like the ringing of a church bell or the playing of taps." With the visuals of the ringing church bell and the playing of taps I could see how people were silenced.

Instead of telling us that the bathroom was a mess, on page 13, Packer writes, "Inside, the mirrors above the sinks returned only the vaguest of reflections, as though someone had taken a scouring pad to their surfaces to obscure the shine. Pine needles, leaves, and dirty, flattened wads of chewing gum covered the floor like a mosaic. Webs of hair matted the drain in the middle of the floor. Above the sinks and below the mirrors, stacks of folded white paper towels lay on a long metal counter. Shaggy white balls of paper towels sat on the sinktops in a line like corsages on display. A thread of floss snaked from a wad of tissues dotted with the faint red-pink of blood."

With this great detail, I automatically get a complete visual of almost every bathroom at a campsite that I have ever seen and I can almost smell the scent of camping.

(Word Count: 388)