Excavating a Narrative
The author engages an interesting and creative metaphor right at the start to convey the process of bringing together all those random bits and pieces of information bouncing around inside one’s head to produce a coherent narrative that those who do not have access to your brain can follow:
“The story that I’m about to tell you is the product of my own mental archaeology.”
Worth Repeating
The book draws to a close on a metaphorical lesson. Not quite as creative or impressive as that which it opens, but not even Babe Ruth hit it out of the park every time. Still, it is a lesson that probably needs to be repeated because it can become so easy to forget:
“The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man.”
Metaphorical Imagery as Art
Every once in a while, you come across sentence that is constructed entirely on a foundation of metaphorical imagery that is so solidly built that it is worthy of being ripped from context and prominently displayed on its own as self-contained work of literary art. The following sentence is an example:
“And although I had pushed it to the very back of my mind, rhythmically, like a metronome, my mother’s riddle marched back to the frontlines – its footsteps faint at first but gradually building in a crescendo that became so loud I could think of nothing else: into the woods.”
The Darkness
From the sublime to the continuing adventures of “darkness” as arguably the single most utilized metaphorical image in fiction since the turn of the 20th century. Rare, indeed, is the author who can resist or the book which doesn’t offer more evidence supporting the argument:
“my optimism had long since disappeared, swallowed like everything else by the engulfing blackness.”
Footsteps
The author has revealed in interviews that his novel originally came into being as a short story title “Footsteps” which incorporated into the expansion. The incorporation comes early and in solidly metaphorical form:
“As a six-year-old boy, the muffled, rhythmic [heart] beats sounded like soft footsteps on a carpeted floor, and so as a kid, almost every night – just as I was about to drift off to sleep – I would hear these footsteps, and I would be ripped back to consciousness, terrified.”
