Brian Dillon turns his attention to the oblique and complex pleasures of the sentence. A series of essays prompted by a single sentence – from Shakespeare to Gertrude Stein, John Ruskin to Joan Didion – the book explores style, voice and language, along with the subjectivity of reading.
Whether the sentence in question is an expression of vulnerability, extremity, even madness, or a carefully calibrated arrangement, Dillon examines how it works and why.