"Like a stone tossed into a flock of birds, talk startled swiftly into flight whenever the new postmaster was mentioned."
"Large and handsome...in a good silk dress, Mrs. Cripps stood like a striped tent without an occasion...."
"The gulls rose up suddenly off the pylons on the pier, the swift beating of their wings like hands shuffling cards."
"Up ahead of her, six white cottages the size of playhouses lined up like girls regarding the gentleman caller come at last to the dance."
"The boys and their talk made her feel still more invisible, like a balloon at the end of a longer and longer string, held by no one. Floating off."
"Every afternoon, he turned around and walked back out as quietly as he had come in, with the exhaustion of a man who hurled himself against the wall of each passing day, and would do so again and again, until the wall broke."
No comment needed, other than the wish that such gems not go unnoticed by readers, and that we writers take the time to replace the cliches that slip so easily into our work with original language like Blake's.
I'll be posting a review of this book shortly on my other blog, Book Talk.
