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 Megan Hunter…
Megan Hunter is an English novelist and poet who achieved some acclaim with her 2017 debut novel The End We Start From which was It was adapted into a 2023 motion picture starring Jodie Comer. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Sussex, followed by a Master of Philosophy in English Literature from Cambridge.
Hunter’s 2025 novel, Days of Light, tells the story of a young woman who, just before the beginning of the Second World War, faces a family tragedy. While I found the book to be terribly over-written, it also contained some fine figurative language. Here are my favourite examples:
- Get into bed now, Anne would say, and lean down and kiss her once. The forehead, so lightly it felt like a dusting of flour, the edge of a wing.
- The wine [which had been spilled] seemed ancient now, grown in to the rug naturally, like moss.
- Ivy, darling! Aunt Genevieve called to her from a low sofa, a clear drink in her hand. She held her niece’s hand in that desperate way older women did, squeezing, as though they could pass wisdom by osmosis, make the younger woman see all she had before her.
- During their brief courtship, Bear had taken her to restaurants where she had experienced the small thrill of a room’s gaze settling on her face, her body, like sunlight.
- Ivy still hated sermons: when Reverend Gils spoke for any length of time she let her mind become clear as a flat ocean.
- Now, Ivy moved forward to the railing for Communion; her Sisters were singing, lifting the corners of the chapel like a bed sheet, causing the whole place to billow and wave with their beauty, the unity of their voices in candlelight, surrounded by incense.
