Clever Metaphor
The description of sexually conflicted would-be promiscuous Bess in the story “Eating Aunt Victoria” features a particularly clever turn of phrase as a metaphor. She’s ruminating on the tongue-jabbing Jimmy and how much she likes pressing up against Derek when her mind turns to Hal’s rejection that she wasn’t good enough:
“Maybe she would end up like her mother, sharing a bed with some woman. Bess didn't want to face a life of being different, of being a lesbian. She felt the claustrophobic softness of that word pressing against her like another woman's breasts.”
Psychological Insight
By contrast, the metaphorical image constructed of herself by the narrator of “Gorilla Girl” actually provide genuine insight in her psyche. It is an image less showy and imaginative than the above example, but also one that will foreshadow how the girl’s story plays out:
“When I jogged evenings in our neighborhood, it felt as though there were two of me: the person I saw in the mirror and that second creature with teeth like a pit bull, leashed and dragging a concrete block.”
Tiger, Tiger
The opening story is titled “Circus Matinee” and the epicenter of its bizarre and perhaps even grotesque narrative is a showdown between a woman named Big Joanie and a tiger. Big Joanie gets more than her fair share—well, she gets exactly her fair share of metaphorical imagery—but it is that tiger for whom the literary jewel of the story is reserved:
“The tiger is the brightest toy in this toy circus, a butane tiger-torch, a brilliant carved bit of amber the manager might hang on a chain.”
Opening Lines, and How!
The opening line of “The Sudden Physical Development of Debra Dupuis” is a virtuoso performance of metaphor as enticement and explanation. The title of the story gives away the topic, but just in case somehow it is overlooked, the opening line hits the reader like a slap across the face when one is caught staring too long at that which they should be not staring at all:
“After their first gym class, while the rest of the seventh-grade girls soaped and rinsed their poor bumps and swells, Debra tipped her head back and let the shower splash over her womanly bounty like a cleansing waterfall among serene and shapely volcanos. She dropped her towel in front of her gym locker and turned sideways to the mirror...Unfettered by gravity, Debra's breasts rose and floated above her rib cage, helium-filled flesh dirigibles, buoyant and blissful honeydew melons.”
The Wedding Kiss
“Shotgun Wedding” opens on the scene where most stories shotgun weddings end. The sister of the bride is describing that moment of watching as the veil of her virginal sister (she herself is most definitely not) is lifted in expectation of the groom’s kiss. The moment is thick with
“The softness of their kiss gives me the seasick feeling that I'm with my sister and the groom on the honeymoon bed... My sister's eyes are closed, her lashes spread out over her cheeks. Even after they've opened again, her eyes remain in the sleep of that kiss as though covered with a milky effluent, something the fairies would make in their mouths and spit onto those they favor.”
