The Decline and Fall
Alice and Eileen carry on a discussion of the world and everything in it in the form of email exchanges in the novel. It is in these exchanges that much of the most memorable imagery occurs as it is in these exchanges that the most elevated use of language can be found. For instance, a give and take about the dwindling state of beauty that the world seems hurtling toward:
“I know we agree that civilisation is presently in its decadent declining phase, and that lurid ugliness is the predominant visual feature of modern life. Cars are ugly, buildings are ugly, mass-produced disposable consumer goods are unspeakably ugly. The air we breathe is toxic, the water we drink is full of microplastics, and our food is contaminated by cancerous Teflon chemicals.”
Relationshipping
An imaginative bit of imagery is engaged to consider the possibilities of relationships being prefabricated to fit existing relationship templates. This passage is a perfect example of the type of discourse that Alice and Elaine raise to the level of high art in their communications via the typically low-rent medium of email:
“Sometimes I imagine human relationships as something soft, water or sand, and that by pouring them into a concrete container we give them shape. Thus, the relationship between a mother and her daughter is poured into a container labeled 'mother and daughter' and acquires the contours of the container, and there it remains, for better or for worse. Some estranged friends might have been perfectly happy as sisters, or some married couples as parents and children, who knows. But what would it be like to forge a relationship without any preset keys? Pour the water and let it fall, that's it. I suppose it wouldn't take any shape, that it would drift off in all directions.”
Third-Person
Except for the back and forth of the emails between Alice and Elaine, the narration is straightforward third-person perspective. This allows for a different sort of imagery; the more typical kind of descriptive prose capable of foreshadowing what is immediately to come such as when celebrated Alice arrives for first the time at the house where and not-a-big-reader warehouse worker Felix is renting with friends:
“Ocean Rise was a semi-detached house, with the projecting left half of the facade in red brick and the right half painted white. A low wall separated its concrete front yard from that of its neighbour. The curtains were drawn on the window facing the street, but the lights were on inside. Alice stood at the door wearing the same clothes she had been wearing earlier. She had put powder on her face, which made her skin look dry, and she was carrying a bottle of red wine in her left hand. She rang the bell and waited. After a few seconds, a woman about her own age opened the door. Behind her the hallway was bright and noisy.”
Alice and Eileen
It is not all just virtual communication with Alice and Eileen. Although not as prominent or dominant as their online relationship, they are not just electronic pen pals. Imagery in this case presents an almost absurdly trite reunion aboard a train platform which the details of the imagery then immediately serve to subvert:
“On the platform of a train station, late morning, early June: two women embracing after a separation of several months. Behind them, a tall fair-haired man alighting from the train carrying two suitcases. The women unspeaking, their eyes closed tight, their arms wrapped around one another, for a second, two seconds, three. Were they aware, in the intensity of their embrace, of something slightly ridiculous about this tableau, something almost comical, as someone nearby sneezed violently into a crumpled tissue; as a dirty discarded plastic bottle scuttled along the platform under a breath of wind; as a mechanised billboard on the station wall rotated from an advertisement for hair products to an advertisement for car insurance; as life in its ordinariness and even ugly vulgarity imposed itself everywhere all around them?”
