Opening Page
The very opening of the book is a demonstration of imagery. In this case, what is presented is an image of two girls at a dance as viewed from the perspective of Esme. It is really a case of pure imagery because none of the details are yet capable of providing the reader with any contextual insight:
“One sits on a chair, opening and shutting a dance-card with gloved fingers. The other stands beside her, watching the dance unfold: the circling couples, the clasped hands, the drumming shoes, the whirling skirts, the bounce of the floor. It is the last hour of the year and the windows be- hind them are blank with night. The seated girl is dressed in something pale…the other in a dark red frock that doesn’t suit her.”
Identity
At the heart of the novel’s thematic outline is the search for identity. What makes a person who they are? Esme Lennox has an answer to that question, put in the form of imagery:
“We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”
The Asylum
The vanishing act of Esme Lennox was not of her own magical concoction. She was long ago secreted away into an insane asylum called Cauldstone. When Iris finds out about the existence of Esme and goes to check it out, the imagery is distinctly at odds with the preconceived expectations about such places built up by media representations (of an undeniable truth) over the decades:
“It takes Iris a while to work out what’s odd about this place. She doesn’t know what she expected—gibbering Bedlamites? howling madmen?—but it wasn’t this ruminative quiet. Every other hospital she’s ever been in has been crowded, teeming, corridors full of people, walking, queuing, waiting. But Cauldstone is deserted, a ghost hospital. The green paint on the walls gleams like radium, the floors are polished to a mirror.”
Two Girls at a Dance, Again
Roughly 150 pages after the opening description of two girls at a dance, there is another such scene. And there is a different kind of imagery. This time, of course, the reader is more informed and has the ability to use context and connotation to more fully understand the imagery:
“One seated, one standing. It was late, almost midnight. The younger girl’s dress was too tight round her ribs. The seams strained, threatening separation, if she breathed in too deeply. She tried slumping her back in a curve, but it was no use: the dress bunched up like loose skin round her neck. It wouldn’t behave, wouldn’t act as if it was really hers. Wearing it was like being in a three-legged race with someone you didn’t like.”
