The figurative language of Joanna Quinn

Daphne Gray-Grant

May 11

Reading time: About 2 minutes

I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of telling images from Joanna Quinn...

The English writer Joanna Quinn is marvellously imaginative. Although The Whalebone Theatre is her first novel, she writes with the assurance of a much more experienced author.

The story begins in the mid-1920s, when a young girl, whose mother died during her childbirth, is awaiting the arrival of a step-mother. Later, a whale washes up on the shores of the English Channel and the girl and her siblings build a theatre from the beast's skeletal rib cage. In an incredible flight of imagination, the story carries on until the Second World War when the girl, now a young woman, and her brother, both become secret agents.

It sounds improbable, I know, but I found the story to be delightful. I also appreciated Quinn's generous and superb use of figurative language. Here are my favourite examples:

And here she is. She has made it through. . . Despite the view from the rattling carriage windows jerking backwards and forwards like scenery waved about by amateurish stagehands
She is fixed in place. An exhibit. White-capped maids come and go, lighting the fire and drawing the curtains, as busy and remote as gulls.
His wooing of her had largely consisted of him presenting her with historical facts in the way a cat continually brings its owner dead mice, despite their perplexing lack of success.
Willoughby eats like a flamboyant painter — sweeping swathes of marmalade across crumbling toast, pouring milk into his teacup for a jug held so high the liquid becomes a single thin torrent …
Jasper blows his nose again, a mournful bugle call.
Every morning she woke exhausted, with a sour metallic taste in her mouth, as if she has spent the night sucking coins.
After a night of thunderstorms, the air is a fresh as clean laundry.
The hedgerows take up motion, cow parsley quivering delightedly every time Willoughby roars past in his Daimler; Chilcombe's horse chestnut trees gladly wave their ice-cream cone flowers, and the buttercup meadows are all swaying invitation.
Rosalind smiles automatically. She often receives praise from women on behalf of her husband, like diplomatic gifts.
A few rooks are pecking a the grass, but they take off as Willoughby approaches, with brisk wingbeats of air, an efficient sound like the brushing down of an expensive suit.
The crisp displays of October, all its smart oranges and yellows, have been spoiled and scatter about as November rushes in, dragging winter behind it like a trail of rattling cans.
When she gets into bed at night, sleep hits her like a punch.
The sound of it [rain] hitting the sea is a crackly hiss, like spitting oil in a frying pan.