Setting
The African nation in which this story is set is never identified directly. "He marveled at the often incongruous nature of his country: a raging waterfall, rocks that balanced precariously on top of one another, and a flower that looked like a roaring flame that had once upon a time caught its breath and never exhaled." Instead of explicit identification, metaphorical imagery serves to imply the status of the story's setting as a semi-fictionalized version of Zimbabwe. The metaphors of precarious beauty threatening to topple or burst into flame serve to underline the social instability which surrounds the events of the narrative.
Babied
The protagonist of the novel actually gestates within a golden egg inside her mother and this egg imagery recurs throughout the narrative. Of her childhood, her mother is told, "You treat her like an egg." This simile refers to the fact that as a child Genie is carried around like a fragile egg that would break if dropped to the ground. As an infant and then a toddler, her feet figuratively never touched the ground because she was held and carried all the time.
Radiance
The comparative power of the simile is put to effective use for the purpose of one character describing another. "It was as though she had a light within her that made her luminescent." This metaphorical imagery is describing the radiant glow emanating from the protagonist, Genie. It arrives courtesy of the unspoken thought of one character looking at her and mistaking it for the external glow of the sun.
Kuki
A simile is used to describe a character named Kuki Carmichael. "Sharp enough now to let her know that she looks like a prune." This comparison to the texture of a prune is a familiar one when dealing with the changes to skin as a result of the aging process. Kuki is described as sharp and wrinkled because she has managed to reach the advanced age of eighty-one with her mind more intact than the elasticity of her flesh.
Darkness
Darkness may be the most omnipresent single metaphor image in modern fiction. Once a reader begins noticing it, the use of darkness becomes almost impossible not to find. "The crunch of car tires on gravel, the squeaky swing of a gate opening, the dance of headlights on the bedroom wall pull Genie out of the darkness she had entered and into the darkness of the room." This particular example is unusual in that the word is used both literally and figuratively. Darkness literally describes the state of illumination in the room in which Genie finds herself. The first instance is a metaphorical description of her mental and emotional state which the literal illumination serves to transform.
