Random scenes in random books that stuck with you

[BlueRaincoat1]

So not necessarily classic scenes from classic books (although happy to hear of them too!) but are there random scenes that pop into your mind frequently from otherwise 'regular' books?

I read a fiction book about the siege of Stalingrad many years ago, and there's a scene where the mother sees an onion, and imagines being able to.cook.it for her sons, and imagines all the goodness going into him. One onion. It pops into my head fairly regularly.

Also a book which had a very fluffy/'chick lit' cover but was much better than the cover suggested (as is often the case...) about an artist who was no longer with her husband but painted a picture of him that perfectly captured the way he rotated his fo

Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim - as a very young child watching her mother being murdered by hiding inside a woven basket which her mother had put her there for safety. Her murder was an honour killing caused by the shame she brought on the family for having a child with an American GI and her being Korean.
I will never read a book like it again, so very sad. Losing the only person that loved her.

Not a scene, but a line, from a Sebastian Faulks book titled On Green Dolphin Street, which says,

'His sense of her as someone of not quite serious adult size was integral to the way he loved her.'

I am a small person and I've felt this with most partners I've had, my taste seems to be very tall men.

Yes! I thought this too. Unbelievable. If you liked that, you'd probably like the bit in The Blind Assassin when she describes the lovers falling to earth and their love streaming behind them like parachutes. Breathtaking.

The scene in Dracula where the ship rushes into Whitby harbour. Thrilling.

Also a scene in a Doris Lessing book (does anybody know which one??) where an elderly woman is remembering her childhood and realising she'll never feel as happy again. 😥

I don't read horror books but once read part of The Fog by James Herbert when it was being passed around on a school trip, and I really wish I hadn't. I wish it wasn't in my head. Anyone who's read The Fog will know which bit I mean, I suspect.

I'd forgotten about that book. But yes, though also the scene where she tells him (I can't recall his name. Leonard?) that she's pregnant and his reaction and contempt, like he has nothing to do with it.

^ That was a bit clumsily worded. I know the thread isn't specifically about horror books, what I was trying to get at is that it was a 'literary' departure I regretted talking.

The entire chapter in Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, where it tracks the flea that brings the bubonic plague to the UK, which eventually infects someone who eventually infects Hamnet...is utterly word perfect. It's entrancing. The fact that she was able to sit at her laptop and imagine the richness of every detail...her writing can seem so simple and accessible but it often blows me away too.

In one of the many thrillers I have read an old man was walking back from the shop with his little arthritic dog. To ensure he kept quiet the villain stamped his dog to death there in the street. It was so well written, the old man's torment and grief that it made me cry.
I don't remember the name of the book or the plot or the characters, but that scene has stuck

In Great Expectations, where Pip kicks the wall after another Estella trauma bonding moment

Flowers in the Attic - when I realised the mother and family actually imprisoned them in the attic. Then the last 2 books realising how far back it all went.

The scene in Dracula where the ship rushes into Whitby harbour. Thrilling.

That scene is based on an event that actually happened (Inspiration). I highly recommend visiting Whitby, it's a lovely town and you can follow the steps of the characters around the town.

That scene is based on an event that actually happened
I didn't know that! But your link doesn't work - could you post again?

I have been to Whitby several times but mainly to eat fish and chips!

Birdsong the part in the library, one of the most erotics things ive read.

I've been to Whitby several times too and always stand up high on the cliff churchyard over the harbour and imagine the ship rushing into it. I have scampi and chips too of course.

A line rather than a scene in a book I don't remember much of otherwise (Jodi Picoult possibly) where one character says to another "I loved you. Very much. But not very well."
It's a very neat surmising of something very widespread and very sad.

The bit in The White Hotel where the ski lift breaks and the ladies in their big skirts drift down to the ground slowly, "silently followed by a hail of skis".

The gratuitously unpleasant scene in Jude the Obscure.

there was a young adult book I read school (as a teacher) years ago.

The lead in it describes how one summer she was fine playing with her dolls/lego and entering into the game fully, like in role play, and the next summer she couldn't do it any more, and she coudl no longer play with toys.

I have written it very badly, but it so perfectly evoked that moment in childhood and I remembered it from my own childhood. It made me cry

Atonement the scene in the post Dunkirk hospital Bryony and the dying French soldier. Most powerful scene in the whole book. But I think the film didn’t do it justice.

There's a scene in Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell where she walks past the man who got her pregnant and abandoned her. I think they are on a beach. It's a brief encounter but so much under the surface emotion. He is completely oblivious of the harm he has done her. That one really stuck with me.

Yes, Ruth has stayed with me, too. The whole concept of the book, which seems to be, essentially, about Ruth doing penance for her sin.

Though the scene from Ruth I think of most, is the man who was developing a romantic interest in her then discovered her 'backstory' and was much relieved at having escaped, and some unpleasant language was used by him/Gaskell, I thought.

In Anne Enright’s Green Road there’s a scene where the sister goes to do the Christmas food shopping for a large family reunion. I come from a family with a lot of men - sons, brothers, fathers and this scene just rang so true for me that by the end I was apoplectic with rage on her behalf! It’s all about her thinking about and putting everyone else in the family first… and just as she thinks she’s finished and slams her car boot shut, she realises she’s forgotten the Brussel Sprouts and goes back into the supermarket to start the whole tortuous process again!

You can read most of it here: clareodea.com/2016/12/18/a-christmas-warning/

@Andante57 The Death of the Heart is such a subtle book but one which has stayed with me since I read it when I was around 18 . I always wondered what would have became of Portia

SylviasMother yes, it’s such a subtle book. Elizabeth Bowen must have been a formidably intelligent woman.
I also wondered what happened to Portia! What happened when Matchett got to Major Brett’s hotel? (that was such a sad scene when Portia told him that the Quaynes just laughed at him).
War wasn’t far away - what would happen to Eddie? Would he enlist in the army or get out of it somehow?
I wish E Bowen had written a sequel.

Ah these passages are amazing! I've had that book on.my shelf for ages, definitely going to read it now!