The Grace
The imagery in this book is primarily that which illustrates a precipitous fall from grace. Therefore, the best place to begin is probably at the point of grace from which the fall began. Courtesy of, as befitting such a topple, the author’s local hometown paper:
“A former Girl Scout, she was honored locally with the Young Poets Award in 2000 and received a Scholastic Writing Award the same year for a short-short story. She was a member of the Spanish National Honor Society and the debate club at Country Day, and she was a writer for the school’s literary magazine.”
The Fall
The imagery of the fall comes courtesy an article published in the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal in March 2011. One could philosophize and suggest that everything which goes up must eventually go down. The more reasonable conclusion would be something that speaks to the dark side of fame, however. Perhaps the moral is that if your greatest desire is for your name to be known by those outside your immediate circle of friends and family, then be sure you stick to the straight and narrow:
“A former national skating star and Lancaster Country Day School graduate is in jail in Ithaca, N.Y., after being arrested in December with heroin in her possession…the drug was worth being $50,000 and $100,000, police said, although various news reports later estimated the drugs’ street value at $150,000. Police charged Blakinger, a dean’s list student at Cornell University, with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the second degree, a felony…`She appeared uncomfortable, uneasy, having a hard time standing still and of an altered state of mind,’ the neighbor told police, according to reports.”
The Lawyer
Imagery is, in fact, utilized by the author herself. One notable example is the description of the attorney retained to represent her. The imagery is notable, alas, because it is highly representative of the rather pedestrian prose which marks this book. But, then again, it is a memoir and not a novel, so that might explain the lack of a wow factor of any sort:
“It was into this world that my lawyer, a white-haired Southern man with a handlebar mustache and a tan suit, showed up one day as if out of thin air. He used funny phrases like `meaner than a two-headed rattlesnake’ and `bless your heart,’ and he seemed like a figure I’d more expect to see in a stage rendition of Inherit the Wind than sitting across from me at the tiny table of the legal visitation room.”
The Jail
One might expect—or hope, at any rate—that if imagery can’t be effectively used to create a portrait of a lawyer barely one degree above stereotype then at least the description of being in jail by someone born to privilege rather than economic disparity might be a bit more visceral and insightful. Instead, the most creative imagery is borrowed from another person and then given no personal tweaking at all:
“Years later, I read about a life in California who called prison The Zo, short for The Twilight Zone. It fits. Up is down, everything is gray, and the supposed rules make no sense. Sometimes they’re actually impossible to follow, or simply not explained. The people fade in and out…Words don’t mean the same things, and every day is a repeat of the day before. You lose sense of time, and nothing makes sense.”
