Opening Line
The novel opens—in a short Prologue before the first chapter—with imagery constructed from a simile. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that if an author uses either straight up metaphor or similes in a novel’s opening line, you can bet that that such figurative language is going to prevalent throughout the rest of the narrative:
“The bike lay on the side of the road beneath a grey oak, the handlebars at an odd jutted angle, as if it had been thrown with angry force.”
Chapter One
For instance, before the first chapter of Chapter One halfway done, two women have already been described as “basketball-player tall” as they chat over espresso at a café. And that chat is also dressed up in metaphorical imagery:
“They spoke in low, intense voices, as if their conversation involved international espionage, which was incongruous in this small suburban café on a pleasant summery Saturday morning”
Density
Such is the reliance upon metaphor and similes in the text that in some cases paragraphs—even single sentence paragraphs—contain more than a single example. As, for example, this description of a seemingly simple scene that could be described using half the words. But it wouldn’t be nearly as resonant:
“Down the hallway their unexpected guest lay flat on her back in the neatly made-up single bed, wide awake and staring dry-eyed at the darkness, hands clasped like those of a corpse or a good little girl, her bedroom door pulled wide open as if to show she had nothing to hide from anyone.”
Describing the Unfamiliar
Have you ever been the victim of a panic attack? Have you ever witnessed another person having a panic attack? If asked to describe such a scene would you be able to accurately do so? These are the type of situations for the comparative quality of the simile was practically invented:
“Watching someone have a panic attack was like looking into the eyes of someone trapped behind glass, drowning right in front of you.”
Complexity
While in many cases that use of the metaphor as a comparative tool is a device to simplify, in other cases the comparison being made enhances the complexity of the description. And excellent example found in the novel is this expressionistic description of a psychological response to conventional expectations of entering the work force:
“Full-time work caused a kind of claustrophobic terror to build and build within her chest until one day there was a humiliating emotional spillage that resulted in her termination or resignation”
