Sentence No. 23 · 19 April 2026
There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something.
James Joyce, Dubliners
James Joyce — Dubliners (1914) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The subject "grace and mystery" is postponed by the existential opener "There was" — whenever you see a "There was/is" phrase, it starts the sentence, and the true subject (the noun pair) follows the verb rather than leading it.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Gabriel Conroy, at a party, hears his wife listening to a song from the landing — and something shifts in him he cannot name. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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