Stardust --Chapter 1

字词句段

The inhabitants of Wall are a taciturn breed, falling into two distinct types.

taciturn
adjective
(of a person) reserved or uncommunicative in speech; saying little.
能被表示程度的副词或介词词组修饰的形容词。
A taciturn person does not say very much and can seem unfriendly.

breed
noun
a stock of animals or plants within a species having a distinctive appearance and typically having been developed by deliberate selection.
• a sort or kind of person or thing: a new breed of entrepreneurs was brought into being.

PHRASES

• a breed apart
  a sort or kind or person that is very different from the norm: Japanese capitalism is a breed apart from that found in the US.
• a dying breed
  a sort or kind of person that is slowly disappearing: the country's dying breed of elder statesmen.
• what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh (or blood)
  a person's behavior or characteristics are determined by heredity.

Immediately to the east of Wall......

** immediately**在这里的用法

The events that follow transpired many years ago.

resent

As the day of the fair approached the atmosphere of anticipation mounted.

restive
adjective

• (of a person) unable to keep still or silent and becoming increasingly difficult to control, especially because of impatience, dissatisfaction, or boredom.
• (of a horse) refusing to advance, stubbornly standing still or moving backward or sideways.

And she tossed her head, prettily, so that the light of the oil lamps caught her perfect golden curls.

Some of them attempted to strike up conversations with......

strike up
When you strike up a conversation or friendship with someone, you begin one. 开始 (谈话); 建立 (友谊) [书面]

a buzz of excitement

......the thronged market. It was bustling with people......

throng

• N-COUNT A throng is a large crowd of people. 一大群人 [文学性]
  a throng of birds.
• V-I When people throng somewhere, they go there in great numbers. (人群) 涌向 [文学性]
  the streets are thronged with people
  tourists thronged to the village

bustle

• V-I If someone bustles somewhere, they move there in a hurried way, often because they are very busy. 奔忙
• V-I A place that is bustling or bustling with people or activity is full of people who are very busy or lively. 熙熙攘攘的
  文中取此意
• N-UNCOUNT Bustle is busy, noisy activity. 忙碌; 喧嚣

......above the hubbub of the market......

hubbub

• N-VAR A hubbub is a noise made by a lot of people all talking or shouting at the same time. 喧嚷; 吵闹声 [书面]
  There was a hubbub of excited conversation from over a thousand people.
• N-SING You can describe a situation where there is great confusion or excitement as a hubbub. 混乱; 骚动
  In all the hubbub over the election, one might be excused for missing yesterday's announcement.

smiled widely
smiled expressively
smiled knowingly
with a teasing grin

Each flower was made of glass or crystal, spun or carved, he could not tell: they counterfeited life perfectly.

** counterfeit**= contra- ‘in opposition’ + facere ‘make.’

• adjective
  made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud: two men were remanded on bail on a charge of passing counterfeit $10 bills.
  • pretended; sham: a counterfeit image of reality

• noun
  a fraudulent imitation of something else; a forgery: he knew the tapes to be counterfeits

• verb [with object]
  imitate fraudulently: my signature is extremely hard to counterfeit.
  • pretend to feel or possess (an emotion or quality): no pretense could have counterfeited such terror.
  • literary resemble closely: sleep counterfeited Death so well.

The use and function of these flowers is chiefly decorative and recreational; they bring pleasure; they can be given to a loved one as a token of admiration and affection, and the sound they make is pleasing to the ear.

描述某样东西的功能和作用的句子。

“My name is Dunstan.”
“And an honest name it is, too,” she said with a teasing grin. “Where are your pincers, Master Dunstan? Will you catch the devil by the nose?”
典故出于：Gerhard Bockman (1686–1773) was an artist in Amsterdam, and he painted and engraved (1743) a picture of St Dunstan holding the Devil by the nose with tongs.

intoxicate= in- ‘into’ + toxicare ‘to poison’
verb [with object] (usually as adjective intoxicated)

• (of alcoholic drink or a drug) cause (someone) to lose control of their faculties or behavior.
  • excite or exhilarate: the team was intoxicated by the prospect of another victorious season
• archaic poison (someone).

stroke
dab at
wipe at
= touch sth gently

......he was, under the strange stars, utterly, irrevocably, lost.
irrevocably
irrevocable= in- ‘not’ + revocabilis ‘able to be revoked’

“It might be a great deal more than you are prepared to pay......

Dazed and alone, Dunstan walked through the market, feeling a great deal older than his eighteen years.

a great deal 用在比较级中，第一次见

Certain he’d settle a flock of our sheep on the girl.

settle
To settle money on someone means to formally give it to them, for example in a will.
She offered to settle a legacy on Cathy.

Summary

The tale started in the Village of Wall, an eighteen-year-old boy named Dunstan Thorn. when he attended the once-every-nine-years Faerie Market, he came cross a tall gentleman and he offered the man a room to sleep. For paid off Dunstan's kindness, the man told Dunstan that he'll attain his Heart's Desire in the next day. Dunstan encountered a beautiful girl but enslaved by a witch, he couldn't help himself fallen in love with her while he had a relationship with Daisy Hempstock, a girl who lived in Wall. Dunstan dated and had one-night stand with the girl who was under the spell but the girl left the village following with the finished market. At last, our guy Dunstan was married to Daisy. Nine months later, a newborn in a basket had been pushed through the Wall by someone and with a scrap of parchment read "Tristran Thorn."

感悟

小说对景色描写非常有画面感，对人物的刻画、动作描写都非常地细致。
At that time Dunstan Thorn was eighteen, and he was not a romantic.
He had nut-brown hair, and nut-brown eyes, and nut-brown freckles. He was middling tall, and slow of speech. He had an easy smile, which illuminated his face from within, and he dreamed, when he daydreamed in his father’s meadow, of leaving the village of Wall and all its unpredictable charm, and going to London, or Edinburgh, or Dublin, or some great town where nothing was dependent on which way the wind was blowing. He worked on his father’s farm and owned nothing save a small cottage in a far field given to him by his parents.
一个不浪漫，普通长相、却希望能看到更多风景的农家小哥的形象跃然纸上，与后面躺在草地上与受诅咒的女孩看星星的形象形成对比，可见不是人不浪漫，浪漫主要看对象。但是这同时也为后文小哥不敢说出自己真爱是谁，还是娶了Daisy做了个铺垫。
看星星那一段描写也非常具有画面感，the sky above was a deep color—blue perhaps, or purple, not black—sprinkled with more stars than the mind could hold.
在剧情方面，一波三折跌宕起伏，遇到真爱和真爱却又分离，娶了小镇上平凡的姑娘，结果和真爱的生的孩子又出现了，所以故事会怎么继续发展呢？