Setting
The title suggests that setting is going to be very important to this novel. Imagery is often put to use to help convey the feeling of that setting. “Frost silvered the tops of the mountains, the winds shook the leaves from the branches, and each morning, the woods seemed thinner, as if the country were slowly showing him what lay within.” Silvered is an unusual verb and that helps to cement the image of how the mountains look much more effectively than merely describing the color of the frost. The addition of the wintering effect upon the woods as the opening of a secret to be explored gives the loss of leaves greater resonance.
Autumn
One character begins to wax philosophically about the need for a new calendar. “When the oaks tint to the color of ripe apricots and the beeches yellow; when the oaks turn a cigar brown and the beeches curl up into crispy copper rolls.” This new calendar would contain much more than just one single autumn. The imagery is designed to demonstrate how the radical transformation that nature undergoes during the fall has a multidimensionality to it. The specificity of the use of color intensifies the argument quite well.
Suspense
The very first use of imagery in the novel appears in the second paragraph. “Fast they ran. Steam rose from the fens and meadows. Bramble tore at their clothing, shredding it to rags that hung about their shoulders. They crashed through thickets, hid in tree hollows and bear caves, rattling sticks before they slipped inside.” No context is provided for what is happening here, but the use of imagery makes the scene as clear as something from an action movie. Even though there is absolute mystery as to where, when, or why whoever “they” are have begun to run as fast as they can, the actual act of their running is very easily to visualize. That whoever is running is not concerned with the shredding of their clothing creates suspense even though it remains unknown whether the runners are good guys or bad guys.
The Fairest
Alice and Mary Osgood are sisters. “They were the same, with the same pale eyes, the same apple cheeks that still shone through sun-browned skin, the same lips which on their father had seemed oddly cherubic, the same curls hidden in the same bonnet, the same callused hands and muscle-knotted calves.” The imagery affirms the reality that the two girls are not just sisters but twins and not just twins but identical. And yet, despite this confirmation, everyone acknowledges a universal the truth. Alice is the fairest sister, somehow.
