Wreck the Halls: A Novel

“Across the room, Melody witnessed Beat’s arrival the way an astronomer might observe a once-in-a-millennium asteroid streaking across the sky. Her hormones activated, testing the forgiveness of her powder-fresh-scented Lady Speed Stick. She’d only gotten braces two days earlier. Now those metal wires felt like train tracks in her mouth. Especially while watching Beat breeze with such effortless grace into the downtown studio where they would be shooting interviews for the documentary.”

The narrator’s use of metaphor and descriptive language captures Melody Gallard’s intense emotional response to meeting Beat Dawkins for the first time. Comparing Melody’s experience to a rare asteroid highlights that Melody doesn’t often respond this way to other people. Comparing her braces to train tracks conveys her self-consciousness and contrasts with the description of Beat’s graceful ease. These details establish contrasts between Melody’s and Beat’s characters and set a precedent for their subsequent relationship.

“It was the same pattern as last time. The blackmailer contacted him out of the blue, no warning, and then immediately became persistent. His demands came on like a blitz, a symphony beginning in the middle of its crescendo. They left no room for negotiation, either. Or reasoning. It was a matter of giving this man what he wanted or having a secret exposed that could rock the very foundation of his family’s world.”

The use of metaphor, simile, and fragmentation capture the negative effect Fletcher Carr has on Beat’s psyche. The narrator compares Fletcher’s presence in Beat’s life to a military attack, which conveys his destructive impact. The image of Beat’s family as his foundation also captures his reliance upon Octavia Dawkins and Rudy Dawkins for stability. This establishes his fear of disrupting this familial dynamic.

“So many kinds of people and they all seemed to have one thing in common. They enjoyed company. None of them appeared to be holding their breath until they could leave. They didn’t seem to be pretending to be comfortable when in reality, they were stressing about every word out of their mouth and how they looked, whether or not people liked them. And if they did, was it because they were a celebrity’s daughter, rather than because of their actual personality? Because of who Melody was?”

The narrator describes Melody’s social unease using third-person plural pronouns. This linguistic choice conveys Melody’s reluctance to claim her discomfort and enacts her fear of being an outsider. The use of questions and italics further underscores how public settings unsettle Melody’s sense of self, establishing how she has room to grow in