The Narrator
In the opening paragraph of the novel, the narrator describes herself. She is "a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption." This imagery presents the narrative which is to come as a thing which needs to be figured out by the reader as well as the writer. The imagery is of a knot needing to be untied, but which is in a state that may only be worsened by pulling at it. The description is of a person not yet fully aware of what will happen by pulling at unknown threads.
Aunt Vittoria
The narrator only knows of her Aunt Vittoria through the distinctly one-sided story of her which she has learned from her parents. "She was a childhood bogeyman, a lean, demonic silhouette, an unkempt figure lurking in the corners of houses when darkness falls." This imagery paints a portrait of the black sheep of many families. These members who are not readily welcomed into the bosom of older family members often take on the mystery and even malevolent presence of stories about strangers to be avoided. The terminology in this description of Aunt Vittoria illustrates the level to which young people's opinions are distinctly shaped by what they learn from "white sheep" members of the family.
Ugly
The opening line of the novel has a daughter overhearing her father say to the girl's mother that their child is not just ugly, but "very" ugly. The narrator is that daughter and after meeting the black sheep to whom she is compared, she herself is able to make this comparison herself. "Even though I had made myself up carefully, what an insignificant face I had, the lipstick was an ugly red stain on a face that looked like the gray bottom of a frying pan." The imagery of the bottom of a frying pan is not inherently ugly but it immediately conveys that sense of lacking significance. Even ugliness can make a statement, but to be a frying pan with lipstick somehow seems far worse. Making the narrator's lack of self-esteem all the more pathetic is her confession to having put significant effort into trying to make herself pretty.
Foreshadowing
Sensory imagery is often useful for the purpose of foreshadowing information to come. Early in the book, the still-innocent young narrator describes hugging her father after a period marked by a lack of such physical contact. "I smelled on him an odor that didn’t seem like his, an odor I wasn’t used to. It gave me a sense of estrangement that provoked suffering mixed incongruously with satisfaction." The imagery here is of the olfactory type, but it is not a typical use. Rather than using this imagery to describe the actual literal smell, the description fits the growing emotional distance between father and daughter. Another sense of mystery is conveyed by the distinct unrecognizability of a smell she does not normally associate with him. Although maturing, she is not yet experienced enough to recognize this odor and the revelation will shock her world.
