Reading time: Less than 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a simile from Chad Harbach.
I’m not much interested in sports (and I’m especially incurious about baseball) so I can’t figure out how the novel The Art of Fielding ended up on my Kindle. My husband must have put it there.
Nevertheless, I was on holiday and I wanted a book, and there it sat, taunting me. What could I do but read?
It wasn’t the best book I read on holiday, nor was it the worst. I viewed it as the male equivalent of well written “chick lit.” Instead of being about women and their love interests it was about men and baseball.
Way too much baseball, for me. But, still, some of the writing was very fine. Here was my favourite simile, which caused me to put down my drink, pick up my cellphone and make a note about it:
His forearms, hands, and thighs formed a diamond-shaped pond into which his tie dropped like an ice fisher’s line.
I’ve seen men’s ties do exactly that. What a pitch-perfect image! I also appreciated the way he captured a perfectly male image and yet took the trouble to write “fisher” instead of “fisherman.” Nice!
