Opening Lines
Multiple literary devices are at the author’s disposal when it comes to commencing a novel. Some like to open with a single line of dialogue. Others prefer a more inward-focused and contemplative bit of stream-of-consciousness to give readers instant psychological insight into a character. In this case, the choice is imagery and it is evocatively engaged for the purpose of action that mingles backstory, setting, foreshadowing, and character description:
“I had been driving for less than an hour when I began to feel ill. The burning in my side came back, but at first I decided not to give it any importance. I became worried only when I realized that I no longer had the strength to hold onto the steering wheel. In the space of a few minutes my head became heavy, the headlights grew dimmer; soon I even forgot that I was driving. I had the impression, rather, of being at the sea, in the middle of the day. The beach was empty, the water calm, but on a pole a few meters from shore a red flag was waving. When I was a child, my mother had frightened me, saying, Leda, you must never go swimming if you see a red flag”
The Smell of Place
Imagery that conveys a particular and peculiar sensory sensation to the reader is standard operating procedure for using imagery. The following example is revealing of the narrator’s own sense of smell while at the same time appealing to the reader’s sense to bring them closer into a familiar moment of being overcome physically by a barrage of odors:
“Soon it started raining again and I had to take shelter in the building that housed the market, amid sharp odors of fish, basil, oregano, peppers. There, jostled by adults and children who arrived hurrying, laughing, wet from the rain, I began to feel sick. The odors of the market nauseated me, the place seemed increasingly close, I was blazing hot, sweating, and the breeze that came in waves from the outside chilled the sweat, causing moments of vertigo.”
Mother and Daughter
An overarching and unifying theme of the novel is that of the special relationship between mothers and daughters. A young mother and child-aged daughter are situated at the center of the narrative thanks to the protagonist’s increasing obsession with them. The nature of the relationship between the mother and daughter is initiated through the use imagery which also offers just the slightest hint of foreshadowing at the psychosis-level obsession which the narrator will eventually develop toward the pair:
“There was something off about the little girl, I don’t know what; a childish sadness, perhaps, or a silent illness. Her whole face expressed a permanent request to her mother that they stay together: it was an entreaty without tears or tantrums, which the mother did not evade. Once I noticed the tenderness with which she rubbed lotion on her. And once I was struck by the leisurely time that mother and daughter spent in the water together, the mother hugging the child to her, the child with her arms tight around the mother’s neck.”
Weirdly True
The narrator makes a weirdly true observation and uses imagery to press it home. It is one of those observations that most people probably don’t really consciously think about, but when it is pointed out know exactly what is meant:
“People we are used to seeing on the beach have a surprising effect when we meet them in their city clothes. Corrado and Rosaria seemed to me contracted, rigid, as if they were cardboard. Nina gave the impression of a delicately colored shell that keeps its soft inner mass—colorless, watchful—tightly locked up. The only one who looked disheveled was Elena, who, clasped in her mother’s arms, was sucking her thumb.”
