Other Voices, Other Rooms Writing Style

Poetic and Dreamy

Other Voices, Other Rooms is written in a style that seems intentionally beautiful, with poetic paragraphs describing the setting and Joel's feelings about it. For example, check out this meditation on how things have happened before the characters were born:

Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would still be like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only. (2.7.14)

How much dreamier can you get than a meditation on what happens before life? And how much more poetic can you get than the cadence of this list of all living things, complete with the uber-eloquent phrase "dust-turned hearts." Dang. Just… dang, Capote.