Reading time: Just over 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes and metaphors from Gail Caldwell….
I wrote recently about a New York Times piece by Gail Caldwell, an American critic and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. I was so struck by the beauty of her writing that I resolved to read one of her three books as quickly as possible.
I quickly settled into Caldwell’s memoir, Let’s Take the Long Way Home.
What a lovely read! Subtitled, A Memoir of a Friendship, the book explores Caldwell’s shared history with Caroline Knapp, also a writer, who died tragically of lung cancer at age 42.
This book offers so much to like and admire, but here are my favourite examples of Gail Caldwell’s figurative language:
- Finding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived.
- The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol.
- I was driving down Brattle Street one winter night at the start of a storm, when the snow was surfing the currents of a soft wind, and I had the dissonant thought that I could grow old here.
- The high stakes of real estate hunting fed my anxiety; the market in those days was like a game of musical chairs, with everyone frantically trying to get situated before the music died.
- Accepting a death sentence is like falling down a flight of stairs in slow motion. You take it in one bruise at a time — blow, a landing, another short descent.
- We stayed on the phone for a long time, and we lit candles together at the same moment, like children capturing fireflies in a jar.
An earlier version of this post first appeared on my blog on June 18/20.
