Sing, Unburied, Sing: Style 1 key example

When she’s describing encounters between Richie and Jojo or Leonie and Given, Ward’s language becomes soft and rhythmic. By contrast, the novel's scenes that focus on drugs or violence are delivered in short, clipped sentences packed with physical details. Ward uses this shift to show how, in the world of this novel, the physical body and the space of memory operate under different rules. Echoing this, the novel’s diction also mixes the everyday and the abstract. Ward’s characters mostly speak in a Black Southern-inflected English that gives their dialogue a strong sense of place. This is very different from the narrative voice of Jojo’s and Leonie’s private perspectives, which are primarily in standard English. The way Richie speaks and thinks also often feels distant from the rhythms of regular speech. He’s a child stuck in childhood because of his traumas, which makes the very adult way he speaks feel unnerving and at times frightening. 

Ward’s syntax also changes across narrators. Jojo’s sentences, whether spoken aloud or not, tend to remain simple and orderly. He narrates his discomfort and suffering in plain terms and has a tendency to use metaphors that relate emotional suffering to physical pain. The tone of Leonie’s sections change depending on her state of sobriety. When she’s high, her narration can sometimes seem to fall apart. Her perceptions sometimes lose their edges, especially when she's trying to avoid seeing the specter of Given watching her silently. Richie’s chapters are sharper and more despairing. As a narrator, he asks a lot of rhetorical questions, and his stories often repeat themselves or contradict each other. Ward’s writing relies heavily on sensory language for all of her characters. Distressing smells, tastes, sounds, and sights recur across the book. The stink of bodily fluids and of rot comes back again and again, linking the supernatural world of Sing, Unburied, Sing to the physical realm.