Reading Response

         
    A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray is a novel about a girl named Gemma Doyle, who finds herself at a mysterious school in London called Spence Academy after her mother dies a tragic death in India, leaving her heartbroken and guilty. She soon discovers her abnormal power within herself, to connect to another, unknown world, a world of dark secrets and illusions. In the book, the author uses great writing crafts to reveal character. The ones which I thought she executed especially well were internal thinking, dialogue and action.
       One of Bray's strongest writing crafts is internal thinking. The internal thinking in this book really shows us how Gemma is feeling about these "visions" she has and a newfound power she has. For example, on page 33, it says "The thing is growling, slithering... The howls and moans inside it making every cell in my body go ice-cold. A scream inches its way up my throat. If I let it out, I'll never stop." These sentences really show that Gemma is absolutely terrified of the creature that lays before her and absolutely terrified of what is going on in these visions.
       Another tool Bray uses well is dialogue. On page 173, she is having a secret meeting with Ann, her roommate, Felicity Worthington, a popular girl she becomes involved with and Pippa, one of Felicity's friends and they are trying to "commune with the other world". It says "The air sparkles with random bursts of light. Suddenly, it's as if the cave is on fire, flames leaping up... "It's a curious thing," Pippa says." "But I could swear I felt a sort of tingling for a moment."... I force a calm I don't feel in my words. "I don't know what your talking about." But we can tell Gemma does know what they're talking about, as she later thinks "It's very funny... They think I've got no aptitude for the supernatural." Through this dialogue, the author shows us that Gemma is scared to let anybody know about what she feels, the dark, strange things she is experiencing, as she is slightly too scared to even face them herself.