Imagery

One of the greatest things about this book is the use of imagery/ details. While I could give an extremely long list of examples, I will only pick out a few to prove my point.

"Larry's mother, Mitzy Lish, had honey-colored, slightly sticky-looking hair- it was coiffed in a bouffant style- and her complexion was much improved by a suntan; in the winter months, when she'd not just returned from her annual pilgrim-age to Round Hill, Jamaica, her skin turned a shade sallow. Because her complexion was further wrecked by blotchiness in the extreme cold, and because her excessive smoking had ill-influenced her circulation, a weekend of winter skiing in New Englad-even to forward the cause of her competition for her son's affection- did not favor either Mrs. Lish's appearence or her disposition." -Pg. 371
While Mitzy Lish is not necessarily a main character in the book, Irving takes the time to detail her, and ables the reader to picture her before getting to know her. This was helpful, because the more Mitzy was in dialouge, the better I could picture the scene and herself.

"She was very strong , and she was hysterical; she tried to demonstrate her headlock on me, but Owen got the towel off his head and tackled Hester at her ankles. Then it was his turn to attempt to get her off me. Owen's nose was bleeding and his lower lip, which was split and puffy, was bleeding, too; but together we managed to take control of her. Owen sat on the backs of her legs, and I kneeled between her shoulder blades and pulled her arms down flush to her sides; this still left her free to thrash her head all around- she tried to bite me, and when she couldn't she began to bang her face on the kitchen floor until her nose started bleeding." -Pg. 476
This scene is a good example of most other ones in the book. Instead of just saying "they violently fought", Irving takes the time to go in to detail, whether he tells where exactly Owen was bleeding, or how Johnny positioned himself on Hester to make her stop. It made it much more enjoyable to actually picture how the fight was happening, every last move.

"She was terribly pale, except for the plump backs of her upper arms, which were painful to look at because her sunburn there was so intense; she wore a loose, sleeveless dress, more gray than black- but maybe she didn't have a proper black dress that was sleeveless, and she could not have been expected to force such a sunburn into sleeves. She swayed slightly, squinting her eyes. At first I thought that she held her ears due to some near- blinding pain inside her head; her dry blond hair looked ready to burst into flames, and one of her feet had strayed out of the straps of her sandals." -Pg. 133
Again, Irving spends time to go into every detail of the woman, Mrs. Merrill, even down to the extremeness of her sunburn. I also liked how the narrator had his own input- "...she could not have been expected to force such a sunburn into sleeves...".
By making the tone of the book informal like that made it easier to bring myself into the story, and once there, use the provided imagery to paint the perfect picture.