Love Gone Bad
The book begins with a very precise assertion of time made emotionally palpable with metaphor. "One day we were in love, and the next it had curdled." That is not entirely true. Technically, the marriage of the narrator to her husband lasted exactly 608 days. Emotionally, however, it went from smooth and fresh to sour and lumpy seemingly overnight.
The Non-Runaway Bride
Divorce brings with it a number of issues that do not arrive with being widowed. The narrator likes to fantasize about herself in "The image of the runaway in a gas station bathroom with scissors and peroxide, becoming new." This imagery has become in the modern age a metaphor not so much for a desperate escape from a terrible situation, but for a woman who has made mistakes wanting to start over. It is a metaphor referencing everything from early Julia Roberts movies to actual tabloid stories to the popular novel Gone Girl.
Every School is Trade School
The narrator references the current school of thought regarding education which insists that disciplines which do not bring instant salary gratification are useless. "The humanities are a sinking ship, just as you are starting to set sail." She is told this by a professor. The metaphorical point being that none of those subjects covered by the term "humanities" can guarantee a long-term career anymore.
Literary Allusion
Literary allusion is engaged in a simile the narrator uses to describe herself by suggesting what she is not. "Days pass and I haunt the house like a reverse-Havisham, wandering aimlessly from room to room." The reference is to Miss Havisham, a mad woman in the Dickens novel Great Expectations. She lives in a cold, lonely mansion, dressed every day in the wedding gown she was wearing when the groom-to-be jilted her. Everything in Havisham's house frozen forever in time as it was at that moment of rejection. The simile is a comparison of the life of the narrator that is unlike Miss Havisham except for being stuck in an emotional time loop following her divorce.
Maudlin Thoughts
Divorce creates maudlin thoughts within the narrator which reach its zenith in seeing herself within a metaphor. "`I unhappily bear the fruit of my own destruction,' a chestnut tree after being shaken by some children." The psychological low to which the narrator has sunk enables her to locate within this imagery a metaphorical meaning. The meaning may not be immediately obvious to everyone. It is a metaphorical greeting card expressing sympathy for the end of her marriage.
