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On a Tuesday afternoon in July, not too long ago, a friend of mine struck a pose imitating a self-portrait of the psychedelic Italian painter Pontormo We were having lunch on a patch of grass outside some library near Russell Square In his self portrait, a goatee’d Pontormo levels one sweaty finger at the fourth wall, his hips half-cocked and his closest leg a little kinked, the whole thing oozing sex and transgression Picture Johnny Depp meets Ewan McGregor Picture dolled-up sixteenth century facial hair Now picture: speedo, because that’s all Pontormo’s wearing – that and an expression that says he knows it   My friend (call her Annabel) was not wearing only-a-speedo, but I still felt a lump in my throat as if I’d swallowed a beating heart I thought about telling her how good she looked, but I thought about a lot of things: how the hell I’d ended up in London, seven thousand kilometres from home; how a train stays on its tracks by sheer friction; why the Victorians ever thought it a good idea to import a tree that smells like semen[1] Mostly, though – at least, that Tuesday in July – I thought about ways to talk to Annabel I’m a fiction writer by trade, a modest purveyor of sweeping narrative, reticent dialogue, and moments of emotional revelation, but like a story never translates seamlessly from idea to paper, so too does it not translate seamlessly from paper to voice Take that from somebody who knows[2]   But those seeking a tale of romance and bared hearts should seek elsewhere, because this is an essay on voice, not girls Or rather, this is an essay on the poor comparison of voice and talking, and possibly on the failure of translation between the two – though in the examples to follow, the latter is nobody’s fault but my own   I’m going to make a bold claim and say voice is one of the most cited but least understood stylistic elements that readers respond to in fiction Name a few good books and you’ll find someone raving about the