English Language & Usage Asked on May 6, 2021
This sentence appears in Shuggie Bain, this year’s Man Booker Prize winner.
Him, her man, who when he shared her bed now seemed to lie on the very edge, made her feel angry with the littered promises of better things.
I tried hard to parse the sentence and make some sense out of it, but it failed me. I doubt if it’s a correct sentence— I mean, grammatically.
That Him there appears to me unanchored, and the writer could have done well to do away with it.
Basically, if one pares down the sentence to its bare bones it might read like:
Her man [who,when he shared her bed now, seemed to lie on the very edge] made her feel angry with the littered promises of better things.
Has the writer tangled himself up here or is it I that am unable to work out the syntax of the sentence?
If you mean "could this be re-written more clearly" then yes, absolutely. However this is award-winning prose, as you seem to be aware. That means that a fair degree of "artistic licence" must be applied.
Your quote was not intended to be a model answer for a student of the English language, however that does not mean that it somehow "breaks the rules" of English Grammar, for there really aren't any - any rules that you have been taught are merely a way to codify what is considered to be "Common Usage".
Yes, it is indeed deliberately convoluted. To a native speaker, its not impossible to work out though: "Him" refers to an 'intimate partner' - literally "her man" - the author himself feels the need to clarify that, presumably to indicate that the narrator is a little unsure about that fact.
Answered by Mike Brockington on May 6, 2021
If you're looking for something in plain English, and without knowing the context, then here's a version for you:
Her man, whom she was sharing her bed with and seemed to be lying on the very edge of it, made her feel angry with his confused promises of better things.
Answered by Grand Torini on May 6, 2021
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