The God of Small Things: Similes

For bookclub we're reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Her writing is peppered with similes, some pleasantly surprising. In the first 50 pages:

....like a high-stepping camel with an appointment to keep

lodged there.... like a mango hair between molars

Rahel's new teeth were waiting inside her gums, like words in a pen.

Futile. Like polishing firewood.

black eyebrows angled like a soaring seagull's wings

....history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside.


Word to look up:
laterite -
lat·er·ite   [lat-uh-rahyt]
– noun Geology.
1. a reddish ferruginous soil formed in tropical regions by the decomposition of the underlying rocks.
2. a similar soil formed of materials deposited by water.
3. any soil produced by the decomposition of the rocks beneath it.