Monday, 30 May 2022

OLIVE KITTERIDGE ( ELIZABETH STROUT) AND THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF ASPIRIN

 His smile would linger as he arranged his bottles, typed up labels. Denise’s nature attached itself to his as easily as aspirin attached itself to the enzyme COX-2; Henry moved through his day pain free


This is a bold metaphor, because not many people know how the active ingredient of aspirin works. By contrast, if you use good similes, you can give us the feeling of reminding  more than discovering something unknown.

The enzyme COX-2  allows the appearance of pain and inflammation and aspirin inhibits them.

Henry manages to pass the day without pain at the expense of his own personality, which ends inhibited, and I´m not sure that this is what the author wants to mean

Anyway, it´s great to see that someone takes the risk of using this daring metaphor

I´m also going to use this post to recommend this novel about the wanderings of a dull teacher of Maths ( redundancy?) of which there is a TV series that I haven´t seen yet