Opening Line
This book begins with a simile. "My dad looked like crap." This is the very first line of the novel. The novel begins with this metaphorical imagery of a tired old man who is not the robust figure his daughter remembers for a reason. The story is partially about the daughter trying to help her father work through the grief of her death which has resulted in her seeing him looking like this while she is herself a ghost.
Anger
The other narrative voice belongs to an Aboriginal woman. Her narrative sections are composed as poetic verse. "It lights my blood like flames. / I become fire." One of the very first things the reader learns about this character is that she doesn't handle anger well. After making a straightforward assertion about that, she follows it up with metaphorical language. These comparisons to fire are forwarded as symbolic examples of what anger does to her.
Character Description
The novel is told through two different first-person narrative perspectives. This affords multiple opportunities for one character to use figurative language to describe another. "Her lips twisted into a snarl that said back off as clearly as if she’d shouted." This is the daughter describing the second narrator's response to a statement made by her father. The metaphorical image sets the tone for the prickly nature of the relationship between the father who looks like crap and the woman who doesn't handle anger well.
Ghost World
The world of ghosts is presented as being significantly different than the world as we know it. "Everything shifted around me, as if the entire world was a deck of cards that was shuffling itself into a different order." This example describes the first time that the ghostly narrator tries to contact the other narrator without physically occupying the same place. The simile offers an easily understood comparison to help describe the very unfamiliar ability to transport oneself dimensionally. It cements the concept that the ghost world is very different but also quite familiar.
Small Towns
The narrator's dad is a cop. He makes the observation that "Small towns can be like lakes: quiet and still on the surface, but with lots going on beneath." The comparison within this simile has reached the point of becoming a storytelling trope. At one time, small towns were considered immune to the worst horrors of criminal activity. In the modern world of fiction, the reality that terrible things can happen just as easily and often in a small town as the big city is an established fact. This comparison to evolutionary violence taking place beneath the serenity of the surface of the lake is a commentary on this evolutionary perspective toward the old-fashioned views that nothing bad ever happens in small towns unless a stranger arrives.
