Reading time: About 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about similes from Carole Radziwill….
I can’t recall what caused me to pick up and read a book by Carole Radziwill. She’s not in my usual demographic! In 2011, she joined the cast of Bravo TV’s The Real Housewives of New York City and spent six seasons on the show. She also became a member of the Kennedy family when in 1994 she married the son of socialite Lee Radziwill, sister of the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
But Radziwell’s husband, Anthony, died of cancer at age 40, and I’m guessing I thought she might have an interesting story to tell in her book, What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love.
The book is predictably name-dropp-y but Radziwell — a former journalist — manages to share a little figurative language I found appealing. Here are my favourite examples:
- Grandma tried to impose a sort of structure but she was no match for five slippery grandkids, and we ran as unchecked as the dandelions and black-eyed Susans that grew wild in our backyard.
- It [the neighborhood] was called Yorkville then, a name that went the way of the rotary phones and rabbit ears in their apartments.
- When she loved the madcap drama of five babies, a handsome husband a pretty new house in the suburbs. The paint peeled faster than she expected, of course.
- Her eyes were as big as quarters and blue like a swimming pool and she spoke softly, almost whispering.
[Photo credit: Gifimadison, Cropped. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.]
