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V is for Voice.

The more I read and write, the more I find I’m drawn to voice.

Voice. What does that even mean?

Voice is the presence of the author that we as readers can observe. You observe voice through tone and mood and, well, I won’t bore you with any more technical aspects. It’s sort of like that old definition of pornography from Justice Stewart’s law clerk–you will know it when you see it.

Have you ever participated in a paper bag wine tasting event? Wine bottles are wrapped in paper bags and labelled with numbers. The guests taste the wines and mark on their score cards which wine matches which vintage. The guest with the most correct guesses wins. I did this game for a birthday party once, and it was a lot of fun.

A discerning taster can distinguish, at a whiff, a Red Rooster Merlot ($16) from a Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon ($566). (Just so you know…at my birthday party I did not offer the latter.) I think it’s cool that we use the word “note” to describe the elements of wine that together create a whole, which echoes (ha ha!) sound.

It’s the same with voice in books.

Here are some very different samples of fictional voice that I happen to love.

From The Misfits by James Howe:

“She’s so sweet sometimes you swear you can smell muffins baking. But here’s the bad news about Ms. Wyman: if you cross her, watch out. That smiley face of hers’ll fall off like a mask that’s popped its elastic, and underneath is a dragon lady. And that Ms. Wyman, I swear, wouldn’t blink at removing your liver with her bare hands and eating it with a spoon.”

From “Salvador, Late or Early” in Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros:

“Salvador inside that wrinkled shirt, inside the throat that must clear itself and apologize each time it speaks, inside that forty pound body of boy with its geography of scars, its history of hurt, limbs stuffed with feathers and rags, in what part of the eyes, in what part of the heart, in that cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and knows only what Salvador knows, inside that body too small to contain the hundred balloons of happiness, the single guitar of grief, is a boy like any other disappearing out the door, beside the schoolyard gate, where he has told his brothers they must wait.

How’s this for a voice-y opening? Tell No One by Harlan Coben:

“When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter. At least, that is what I want to believe.”

And from one of my favorite short stories “How to Talk to a Hunter” in Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston:

“The hunter will call you one day and say that he has a friend coming to town and can’t see you. The man who said he is not so good with words will manage to say eight things about his friend without using a gender-determining pronoun. Get out of the house quickly. Call the most understanding person you know who will let you sleep in his bed.”

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As you can see, I’m in love with voice. There are so many novels out there that grab you by the scruff of your neck with voice. For further voice lessons, I recommend Booker Prize winner The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

What about you? How important is voice to you as a reader or as a writer? What is your favorite voice-y book?