Chapter 1:
14 haha
2 ouch
12 similes
There’s something scintillating in every paragraph. Here are a few examples in addition to all the above:
Wonderful phrases:
Throwing your good life away is one part rapture, loc. 42
An ordinary wildness, loc. 80
Sweet closed eyelids, loc. 136
The disaster is the failed expectation, loc. 163
just to fill a hole nobody meant to dig in the first place, loc. 193
A forest fire, if that’s what it was, would roar. This consternation swept the mountain in perfect silence, loc. 250
Her thoughts clotted, loc. 258
The life she had recently left for dead was still waiting, loc. 283
Sadness filled her like water, loc. 291
saved by AA and the Mountain Fellowship church, local. 380
calamitously tilting in, loc. 387
an instrument of finesse, loc. 411
So the slaughterhouse had its attractions, all things considered, loc. 430
slightly overripe ladies, loc. 454
Be sweet and carry a sharp knife, loc. 515
the child’s devoted unconsciousness, loc. 516
innocent by reason of insanity, loc. 537
strange fortune, loc. 557
the redneck national anthem, loc. 716
Inadmissable thoughts, 725
underly endowed, loc. 725
full righteous outrage intact, loc. 772
quicksands of stupid, loc. 772
outrageous intent, loc. 800
falling off the marriage wagon, loc 800
deceits were beyond her husband’s range, loc. 942
a no-heller church, loc. 1056
one-liners-in-Christ, loc. 1064
Cross between lightning bugs and dirt (a smell), loc. 1064
combination of urine and mashed bananas, loc. 129
Something between tomatoes and a ladybug (a color), loc.
Sunshine on a cloudy day
Pyramid scheme
Interesting energy loc. 2555
Butterfly lab, loc. 2565
Recreational envy, loc. 2595
criminally hoping, loc. 3034
I think Mother wants to worm the pregnant ewes today, loc. 3120
relishing her own existence in any form, loc. 3314
a bargain bin of dead people’s jewelry, loc. 3335
A continental ecosystem breaking down, loc. 3861
an anger-deficit problem, loc. 4005
racing toward a future like some complicated sand castle that was crumbling under the tide, loc. 4175
a vigil against the cold, loc. 4176
They couldn’t close out the whole world, maybe, but they could sure find something on their TV or radio to put scientists or foreigners or whatever they thought he was in a bad light, loc. 4358
gathering his gumption, loc. 4188
she’d quit smoking. Since stepping into the flammable atmosphere of Ovid Byron, loc. 4552
a medium-size pod of tardiness, loc. 4831
She had roaming capabilities, loc. 4884
Some universal junk-attraction principle, loc. 4921
a museum of people’s second thoughts, loc. 4984
trails of ruminant breathing, loc. 5206
a ponytailed pied piper in cowboy boots, loc. 5616
an outlandish composure, loc. 5641
answers whose questions had all died of natural causes, 5897
the inhospitable garden, loc. 5914
arboreal stoicism, loc. 5931
a fir colossus, loc. 6055
this child’s unaccountable poise in the midst of a life that had been wrecked, loc 6078
post-traumatic stew of panic and rejection, loc. 6428
The man could not hold on to tension with a baseball glove, 6437
the reverence of an ox in the presence of flight, loc. 6614
expressing himself with a hammer in an empty barn, loc. 6614
a glimpse of strange fortune, loc. 7276
the reckless thrill of being at sea, loc. 7305
