If you want to write a book review that's quite creative and stylish then
you may want to add some metaphors or similes. And what we'll do here is we'll
look first of all at a couple of examples that you want to avoid and then
we'll look at some more positive examples as well. So in the first case
here we have a comparison of this book to being gifted a box of chocolates. T
That sounds okay, but The Remains of the Day has nothing to do with chocolates.
It's about a butler who's a fairly stiff figure, and none of the metaphors in the
book are really about chocolate. We have metaphors in the book that have
to do with light and darkness, with clothing, with the landscape -- but
there's nothing in there really about chocolate. Even the title, The Remains of
the Day -- you know if you wanted to connect it you maybe you can say
something about eating After Eights ... chocolates in the evening, that kind
of thing. But beyond that it doesn't really work, and so the biggest thing to
avoid is just to pick a random metaphor where you think, well, I like the book and
I like chocolate, and we can compare them. That does not work. You really need to
pick a metaphor that is kind of inherent or organically related to the content
of the book. The second one is also problematic because here we have a
phrase that's very cliched. So "pulls out all the stops" -- that's a cliche, and you
want to pick metaphors that are fresh and interesting and are going to startle
your reader perhaps. So it's okay to use the odd cliche, but you have to be
careful with it. Moving on to some more positive examples, in this case we
have a comparison of this book to a washed out watercolor painting. And
the images elaborate it in what follows. Now that works in this case --
unless you're John Banville. Then it's probably not the right thing to say, but
in this case it works because the sea is very much about ... well, the ocean and the
waves in the water. And so by thinking about water we've picked a
metaphor that is closely related, that works
with the actual text. And the last sentence we've added here kind of works
that out, that if the painting is dreary and dull we can say something similar
about the book. The word "digressive" maybe doesn't quite work quite as well with
the washed out watercolour painting, although maybe you could say that
as the paint moves around maybe it digresses! But in this case we've just
added "digressive" [not only] because maybe it describes the novel, but also to
complete the alliteration, which is another nice stylistic effect. One more
positive one here: "Lord of the Flies is the last book I would take to a deserted
island. It might be useful to stoke a fire, but its depressing story of
bullying fails to inspire." So what we've done here is we've taken this image of a
deserted island, which can be a bit of a cliche, and we've talked about stoking a
fire. We want to burn the book. That's the only way in which it is useful. This
works because Lord of the Flies takes place on an island. It's all about
being on a deserted island and having to survive. So in this case we've we've kind
of recuperated the cliche we've resuscitated it and breathe some life
into it. And then it's totally fine. Motice also one more stylistic detail
here. We've added this little bit of rhyme with "fire" and "inspire" and that
creates a nice effect as well. The final example is really a mix and it may work
or it may not. It's kind of up to you in this case. We have two metaphors going on,
and I think the one works well with the story [whereas] the other one is a little bit more
cliched. So the one that works with the story is this notion of darkness and
light. We talk about dark humour and we talked about light, and the story is
very much about that. There are lots of metaphors like this in The White Tiger.
The other metaphor is harder to spot, and this metaphor is being drawn in and
"hooked," and I think you can relate this this to something like fishing.
Does this work? Well, it's fairly traditional kind of language. I think
it's probably okay, but often we're not even aware that we're using metaphors.
And so I think it's first of all good just to point out how metaphoric our
language is, and then how easily we mix these things together, where we have this
kind of fishing metaphor and we have a dark and light metaphor. I think it's
okay in this case, but you could probably do better. You could be more consistent,
and the biggest thing is to really think then about ... can you find a metaphor that
applies particularly well to the book that you are reviewing? Not just a nice
metaphor in general, but something that almost comes out of the content or the
title of the book [and] is integrally related and is something
that's really going to be stylish and have an impact on the reader. So just to
summarize, watch out for cliches, watch out for unrelated metaphors, and try to
pick ones that are organic and fit with the book.