Language

“Renaude” by Charlotte Bondy combines narrative passages with descriptive ones, but the former outweigh the latter, as the focus is on the development of Clara and Mischa’s friendship.

Imagery

However, imagery is present in several descriptive passages that have the role of making readers visualise the characters or their surroundings. For instance, the following quotation contains visual and sensory imagery and is meant to illustrate the overall atmosphere in Mischa’s apartment:

Mischa and his mum live on the second floor of an old row house on Parliament. When I’m over there everything feels exotic. The smell of Mischa’s mother’s cigarettes sits heavily in the air. There are built-in bookshelves and coloured glass bottles of foreign liquor. (ll. 11-14)

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Similes

Similes are also present in the short story and they mostly illustrate Clara’s perception of what surrounds her. She sees Mischa as having “cheekbones like Kate Moss” (l. 2), which shows that she thinks he is an attractive person. The same idea is reinforced by the simile “his eyes squeeze shut like a smiling Buddha” (ll. 8-9). This simile also hints at Mischa’s bohemian behaviour and him being an “old soul” (l. 34).

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Allusions

The story also contains several allusions, most of them being related to books and music. When Mischa and Clara see Renaude reading “Lolita” (l. 84) by Vladimir Nabokov, they immediately exchange a glance and smile, indicating that they understand something about Renaude’s personality from her choice of book.

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Symbols

A few symbols are also to be found in the text.

First, note that Mischa’s curly hair is mentioned several times in the story, as both he and Clara play with it: “I curl one of his brown locks around my index finger and then let it go, watching it re-coil itself” (ll. 74-75); “Mischa looks at me and curls a strand of hair behind his ear”(l. 106).

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