Darkness
Darkness is the quintessential metaphor of the modern age. Pick up just about any novel written since the end of the 19th century and somewhere will be found at least one reference to darkness within the context of metaphor. For this author, it becomes useful for a character explaining the cultural differences in how people speak about death:
“When someone dies, you don’t say they died, like you do here…Ah Bo had a beautiful soul, so clean, so bright. Now she was going to a place where there is no more darkness.”
Words with Enemies
The narrator often refers to a manner of speaking sharpened from a skill into an art by her grandmother. It is the art of conversation as prosecution in which the real ability lies in word choice:
“Words with bones in them, my grandmother calls them. Words to make the other person fall flat on their back and die a curly death.”
“Squished tragedies”
This metaphorical imagery is applied literally to a hoard of chocolate eggs which the narrator has guarded with extreme prejudice and preciously applied overprotectiveness. But ants got to them anyway. On the novel’s broader metaphorical canvas, the narrator is the chocolate and her overprotective parents are the one standing guard over a squished tragedy.
Metaphorical Meteorology
Culture clashes and the possibility of assimilation lie at the thematic root of the narrative. Imagery related to color is pervasive throughout the book, but one particular passage early on becomes the metaphorical epicenter from which all the subsequent references radiate:
“White is the colour of mourning, red is the colour of blood and life and sunrise, and black is the colour of the evening. But summer evenings here seem pastel, the weather more tame than in Southeast Asia. In fact, everything about this new country seems more contained, hazy like a sort of heaven…”
"Father Government"
Also pervasive throughout the narrative are comical moments deriving those minor cracks and fissures of cultural misunderstanding when efforts at assimilation are taking place. When the grandmother is demonstrating her aptitude for speaking skeleton words, she is often the central communications agency of this type of humor:
“`Buddha bless Father Government!’” She calls it Father Government, like Father Christmas, as if he is a tangible benign white-bearded guru with an everlasting bag of cheques slung over one shoulder.”
