Moonlight Spills
The novel begins in bed, sleeping, dreaming and seeing something. And then, in what will be merely one of the first of a long line of metaphorical images framed in the gloried tradition of the gothic romance novel, the figurative imagery flows in rich in simile and erotic underpinning:
“Moonlight spilled in, white as cream, soaking the sheets and my nightgown—I was wet, too, from the heat—drenching the whole room except for a pillar of shadow that stood at the window…”
Moonlight Pours
The heroine comes face to face—so to speak—with a shadowy figure just as he is transforming into something more substantive. He becomes, before her very eyes, a (white) shadow man in in the moonlight:
“The shadow man turned to face me then, only he wasn’t a shadow man anymore, he was gaining flesh—pale white flesh as though the moonlight was pouring into a mold and making something whole.”
Moonlight Streams
The power of moonlight is especially vigorous in the novel. The metaphorical imagery reaches a crescendo of power in this example in which the imagery gains the power of strength and control and dominance:
“The rain had stopped. Instead of wet gusts of air, moonlight streamed through the windows. It was the moonlight that had pinned me to the bed.”
Moonlight Retreats
The following quote provides an example of an extending a metaphor to deepen and broaden the impact of the imagery. The moonlight here is given shape and form with language that gives it a sound and even endows it with an easily imagined tactile sensation.
“The moonlight drew back into the shadows with a hoarse rasp like a wave dragging over rough shingle, and then the shadows themselves shriveled and shrank and vanished like smoke.”
Moonlight Spills...Again
For as long as gothic romances have existed, the most vital tool in the writer’s box has been the simile. It effectively cuts through the unexplainable by allowing explanation through comparison. The problem with such comparisons, of course, is that there are only so many recognizable things with which other things can be compared. What is interesting about the two examples of metaphorical moonlight “spilling” is that the moonlight which is compared first to white cream and then to water rushing from an broken dam is not exactly the same thing each time. Indeed, the author uses moonlight in a particularly flexible and elastic manner.
“I put down Dahlia’s notebook and turned out the light. Moonlight spilled into the room as if it had been held back by a dam and was now released, but it was barren cold moonlight and the shadows stood rigid and still, as cold and unmoving as iron bars.”
