Bell
This is a book that is all about advice to those experiencing trauma. "My mother’s last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love." The trauma in this instance is hearing the last word one's mother speaks, but not at the moment of her death. The metaphor of that last word being "love" ringing like a bell calling one home to eat is because the mother died alone after speaking that one word. The child keeps hearing the sound of a bell because that last supper was served but never eaten.
Water
The term soulmate gets used too frequently to really mean much anymore. What may be needed are some new metaphorical images to reduce the clutter of cliches. "Two people who leapt from the same pond to miraculously swim down parallel streams" is how the author describes her relationship with "Mr. Sugar." It is a nicely framed image, but also an example of why metaphors do not necessarily need to make perfect sense. Overthinking this one is sure lead to questions with difficult answers, but on the surface, it makes sense, somehow.
Hell
The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre famously described hell as simply being in the presence of other people for eternity. The author takes this premise and narrows it down to fit into describing bizarre love triangles. "Hell is other people’s boyfriends" is an all-encompassing metaphorical circumstance describing the situation when a nice guy is "just friends" with a girl dating someone who doesn't deserve her. Gender convenience allows for substituting "girlfriends" as it applies. Not all undeserving companions are boyfriends.
Choosing Van Gogh
A painter friend of the author had suffered three different rapes in her life. Still, somehow, she manages to become successful at her art as well as have fruitful relationships with men. She explains that she could either let her rapists determine the life she would lead or the painter Vincent Van Gogh. To "choose Van Gogh" becomes a metaphor for empowerment and self-determination.
Inner Voice
A reader sends in a letter explaining a fear of early death due to genetics. The author responds metaphorically. "There’s a crazy lady living in your head." This metaphor describes that inner voice that so many people suffer living with that whispers self-defeating information which serves to make life unbearable even before anything happens. It is the opposite of that well-intentioned roommate inside our head known as the conscience.
