Reading time: About 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about similes and metaphors from Sarah Winman….
Sarah Winman is a British author and actress. She attended the Weber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and began her career in theatre, film, and television before turning to writing. Winman currently resides in London and is celebrated for her emotionally rich and character-driven novels.
Winman’s 2017 novel, Tin Man, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and long listed for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence. This book is set primarily in Oxford, England, from the 1950s through the 1990s, and centers on the intertwined lives of three characters: Ellis, Michael, and Annie. It delves into friendship, love, and the passage of time.
Winman’s assured use of figurative language impressed me. Here are my favourite examples:
- His father wore a vest, and sunlight streamed through the window and fell on his shoulders and chest, and his skin was patterned by fleurs-de-lis that had been carved into the glass, and the overall effect made his father look as if he had been sculpted from the finest marble.
- He remembered how he watched his father pull his skin this way and that way, drawing the razor across the bristles, the sound of sandpaper in the folds of soap.
- It was the first of many memories he had, of how Michael sought Dora’s attention in those early days, how he clung to her every word as if they were handholds up a cliff face.
- He said that he’d read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping-stones, to the bank of experience.
- Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in.
- I wheel him close to the edge of the water. He blinks as spray catches his face. Minuscule rainbows darting like midges.
- Escargots are placed in front of us, the aroma of garlic rising thickly like mist off a lake.
- And from the restaurant opposite, she’d have bought a bottle of Chianti Ruffino, which would be waiting on the kitchen table, opened. Breathing, she liked to say, as if it was a small animal.
