A Small Voice From Then

Perhaps if I am ever to become a worldly refined author, I hope to write an an evocative, alluring, and eloquent passage such as this...from my current read: The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer:

"Anna wasn't a stupid woman, but she was uneducated, full of superstitions, and unveiled fears and desires. Hefty, always short of breath, florid, she dressed with unsuitable flash for a woman of her age and size. She wore a big false smile full of big teeth. Set her reddish hair in little pin curls and used beer as a lotion. She spent her days gossiping and read nothing.
She slept in the same room with her son, even when he was fully grown. She waited on him as though he were a king, serving him lunch on good china everyday and hushing the neighbors' children when he took his daily afternoon nap.
She always knew which child in the district had been born with a deformity, and she always had a theory as to why: a harelip because of the mother's vanity, a grimpy leg because of the father's philandering. She told Pepi that his father had suffered from dementia at the end-- a sure sign of syphillis, she said. I don't know to this day whether it was true. Maybe she got the idea from the same wellspring of Austrian poison that caused Hitler to believe that syphilis was a 'Jewish disease.'"