Simile: Beauty
Higginson often uses metaphors and similes in the imagery of character descriptions throughout the novel. The characters are brought to life more vividly through imagery, combining their physical presence with the hidden mysteries working behind the scenes in their psyche: “Beauty looks up at last, her gaze burning into the indifference of his shoulder. Had either of them looked at her now, they might have seen the knowledge inside her eyes, smouldering like a fire, but without any light in it. But they are both too attached to their own concerns to see anything else" (64).
The House
Higginson uses a very simple yet powerfully evocative metaphor to describe the Durban house. It is a case illuminating the power of breaking imagery down to essentials and going for the simplicity of an accessible simile rather than constructing complex poetry: “The Durban house was a hundred and fifty years old and whenever anyone walked inside it, it creaked like an ancient ship" (6). From this simile we discern the house is old and rather unstable; we can picture how its very walls are laden with the weight of years.
Metaphor: The Land
Patricia has sold the farm and let the developers' crew onto her land, leading to many changes: "This verdant stretch which was once a favorite place of Patricia's—a breathing place between the real world and the farm—has been reduced to a war zone, in which men wander about the mist like wounded soldiers, their boots heavy with mud" (10). In this metaphor, the land is now ravaged like the trenches and no man's land of war, with spectral figures and haunting sounds. It is a place she does not recognize and one in which she no longer feels comfort; this signifies it is time for her to leave, and time for her to reckon with the equally ravaged past.
Metaphor: The Shelf
Patricia uses a metaphor of a shelf to explain how she dealt with Looksmart leaving her when he was nineteen: "As the years went by, Patricia learned to shelve the disappearance of Looksmart along with all those other items she had never properly understood. It was a crowded shelf even then, and the matter of Looksmart often felt like the least of it" (66). We can imagine Looksmart as, say, a book that Patricia shelves neatly with other things she wants to ignore. He is now out of sight, out of mind, gathering dust. She is also referring to the other things she did not want to deal with or try to understand, which we can assume have to do with apartheid and its end. This emphasizes how Patricia does not usually reckon with things; rather, she puts them aside and concentrates on her busy life.
Simile: The Silence
Looksmart is committed to bringing out the truth of what happened (at least from his perspective) with himself, Grace, and Richard, hoping to make Patricia aware of her guilt and complicity in everything that happened. It is not an easy task even though his anger fuels him, however, and at one point he "has to pick his way across the silence carefully, deliberately, like one stepping across a line of stones that stands over a raging torrent; yes, the silence is roaring at them from its black throat" (112). In this simile we can imagine a tempestuous, raging river with a perilous path of stones being the only way across; it is the difficulty and danger of this situation that makes it an effective way to show what Looksmart is feeling as he ventures forward with his story.
