Book Review: The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

"Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of a doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, and he learnt them well," declares Mark Forsyth in the opening sentence as he strikes yet again in his own inimitable style and tells us "how to turn the perfect English phrase" without missing a beat. If you have enjoyed his previous books The Etymologicon and The Horologicon, there's every chance that you will enjoy this one too. And for a rather catastrophic and a messy topic like Figures of Speech (like he puts in the book's Epilogue), The Elements of Eloquence is anything but a hard read.

To be honest, we all use many of these rhetorics in our day to day parlance - like Scesis Onomaton and Pleonasm for instance - without us even realising what these techniques are or why have they been effective in the first place, but reading this book has made me ask this simple question - "We are taught how to read and write in schools, but why aren't we never taught how to read and write well?" Is it because rhetorics are outdated and have gone out of fashion? Or someone somewhere decided they are no longer necessary?

Forsyth thankfully is here to help and take us through a very jocular circular ride - a tactic he employed in The Etymologicon as well - by separately explaining each figure of rhetoric and cleverly ending each chapter with an example of the next technique (which is explained in the next chapter). Quoting from the works of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Churchill and other literary heavyweights in a witty conversational format, he beautifully illustrates how mere phrases can become catchphrases by following simple rules of rhetoric, rendering them instantly memorable and pleasing to the ears. It's all about style over substance!

Explains Forsyth, "A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely." If you're a word nerd, or literature lover, such as myself, look no further. Informative, amusing (there were several instances where I literally laughed out loud) and "eloquently" written, the book is a must read for anyone and everyone interested in English and the art of writing. When I reached the end of the book, I was almost tempted to follow that circular link back to Chapter One and read it all over again. A job well done, Mr. Forsyth! I am not sure what your next book will be, but you can be pretty sure that I will be reading it.