Literature Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for scholars and enthusiasts of literature. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
An excerpt from "Love Marriage" By V.V. Ganeshananthan:
The nerve of Murali, they thought. In love? These were not words they were used to saying.
Who are the "they"? So "nerve and in love" is not what they were used to say, then what was it that they were used to say.
This sentence just feels like too abrupt and sudden to connect it to the preceding context.
"The nerve of Murali!" means "What a nerve!" or "How dare he!" They are amazed at his audacity.
I don't know who Vani, Kumaran and Murali are, but if the 'she' in the excerpt is Vani, then I think 'they' refers to her family, including Kumaran.
'used to' (in the context) means 'accustomed to'. They are not accustomed to hearing or using the words 'In Love'. (I'm not sure why there is a capital 'L' in the original.)
That story looks terribly difficult to read. Without inverted commas (quotation marks) it's hard to tell when someone starts speaking and when they stop.
It means that they think that Murali has a lot of nerve -- or insolence -- in falling in love, which was not something they were accustomed to his doing, and consequently not something they were accustomed to talking about.
