Reading time: About 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes from Amy Waldman…
I was such an enormous fan of Amy Waldman’s first novel, I resolved to read her next book as soon as I possibly could.
I received A Door In the Earth as a Christmas gift. And while I regret to report it didn’t captivate me in the same way as her earlier book, The Submission, Amy Waldman still showed considerable flair with her figurative language, especially simile.
Here are my favourite examples:
- Between the house and the outhouse hung a line of laundry. The men’s pants on it ballooned in the breeze as if they yearned to walk off.
- As amusement ricocheted around her, Parveen put her hands on her knees, as if to hold herself in place.
- The more sophisticated debates took place on academic listservs, like mushrooms hidden in the shade for only the knowing to find.
- To Kabul’s residents, the ward was like a giant pothole that you kept swerving around until you fell into it.
- And that wasn’t even counting the internet, that endless virtual bazaar, flat and bottomless at the same time.
- Across from him sat a soldier wearing, over his armor, a backpack from which antennas protruded, as if he were an insect complete with exoskeleton.
- She gripped a tree branch, scaly and psoriatic beneath her hand.
- The insurgents, while invisible to Parveen, were an increasing presence to everyone else, seeping into the village like dye into water.
