Gabe
The author of this novel had already attained a certain kind of reputation for being a craftsman of individual sentences. Part of that reputation stems from his eloquent use of metaphorical imagery. A character named Gabe, for instance, is described as a man who is “touching forty but looked ten years older again, with a face on him like a vandalized church, long and angular and pitted, eyes glinting deep in their sockets like smashed-out windows.” Two different similes combine to create vivid images that hint at not just Gabe’s physical appearance but the kind of life that has led to that appearance. A reader may not be able to precisely describe to another exactly how a face can look similar to a vandalized church but the idea conveyed is that of something that once looked admirable or perhaps even majestic. The additional detail of sunken eye sockets further enhances that concept of how a hard life can change the looks of a person.
The Crow
Descriptive flights of fancy punctuate the narrative even in the most mundane of circumstances. For instance, a crow features a coat that is “black from a distance but if you got near enough and the light caught the plumage right you could see that the feathers were a deep navy folded through with tints of iridescence, like petrol in water.” No particular narrative necessity exists to pay such close descriptive attention to this bird. It is being surveyed through the eyes of a character who clearly is not of the intellectual level to engage such language. Such an intensity of focus on an utterly tangential component of nature is indicative of the approach to narrative perspective. The narrator is a third-person observer of whom it is a necessity that his language skills rise above that of the dialogue spoken by far less educated characters.
Dread and Darkness
A female character named Nicky stands before a border separating safety of home from the darkness in the woods. She hears sounds and thinks she may see flickers of movement. “It felt like the dark was watching back.” This is a summation of the feeling of facing an unknown fear that cannot be seen but can somehow be “felt” through the intensified attunement of the other senses. A feeling of dread occupies this particular scene and it all springs from that uneasy feeling of darkness itself being the entity watching you.
The Ferdias
The Ferdias are a family comprised of unpredictability which inevitably produces chaos. “You could never tell what lines they would elect to cross, what courses of action they would follow through to the bitter end, because they did not know either.” It is less the reason for why these guideposts of behavior metaphorically comprising borderlines exist that create problems than the fact that the Ferdias have little interest in self-examination. Chaos results not so much from the Ferdias crossing lines—which is to be expected more often than not—as it originates from the family members never taking the time to wonder why these lines should exist or be respected in the first place.
Wild House
The meaning of the title of the novel is not really delved into with any great detail. It is really just a passing metaphorical observation that offers explanation. A character asserts “That house is a wild house.” A little later it is mentioned that the house in question is no longer is a den for large-scale casual drug use and so the narrator declares that “Sara and Cillian’s house was no longer a wild house.” The title seems to simply be little more than a metaphorical term to describe a party house where people congregate to share in the joy of drug addiction.
