The Virgin Suicides

The neighborhood boys use hyperbole, simile, and imagery in their recollection of the only party thrown at the Lisbon household, which is held in the basement-level rec room (or recreation room) of the house: 

The steps were metal-tipped and steep, and as we descended, the light at the bottom grew brighter and brighter, as though we were approaching the molten core of the earth. By the time we reached the last step it was blinding. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead; table lamps burned on every surface. The green and red linoleum checkerboard flamed beneath our buckled shoes. On a card table, the punch bowl erupted lava. The paneled walls gleamed, and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were only a patch of glare like a congregation of angels.

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In a passage marked with hyperbole, Mr. Lisbon reflects with surprise on his inability to truly understand his daughters, whom me metaphorically compares to "strangers": 

Apparently, as he stepped back inside, he saw Therese come out of the dining room [...] Her high forehead glowed in the light from the street and her cupid’s lips were redder, smaller, and more shapely than he remembered, especially in contrast to her cheeks and chin, which had gained weight. Her eyelashes were crusted, as though recently glued shut. At that moment Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn’t know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with, and he reached out in order to meet her for the first time.

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In a passage rife with hyperbole, the neighborhood boys narrate Trip Fontaine's attempts to meet Lux at school: 

Against the advice of his father and Donald, he put on sunglasses to conceal his staring down the hall. Three times his heart jumped at the decoys of Lux’s sisters, but Mr. Woodhouse had already introduced the day’s speaker—a local television meteorologist—by the time Lux came out of the girls’ bathroom. Trip Fontaine saw her with a concentration so focused he ceased to exist. The world at that moment contained only Lux. A fuzzy aura surrounded her, a shimmering as of atoms breaking apart, brought on, we later decided, from so much blood draining out of Trip’s head.

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In a passage rich with detailed imagery, the neighborhood boys employ hyperbole when returning, after a year, to the rec room (or "recreation room") of the Lisbon family home, where they had once been invited for a chaperoned party:

By the time we reached bottom, we felt we’d literally traveled back in time. For despite the inch of floodwater covering the floor, the room was just as we had left it: Cecilia’s party had never been cleaned up. The paper tablecloth, spotted with mice droppings, still covered the card table. A brownish scum of punch lay caked in the cut-glass bowl, sprinkled with flies. The sherbet had melted long ago, but a ladle still protruded from the gummy silt, and cups, gray with dust and cobwebs, remained neatly stacked in front. A profusion of withered balloons hung from the ceiling on thin ribbons. 

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After the deaths of all the Lisbon sisters except Mary, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon decide to sell the family home, hiring Mr. Hedlie, a school-teacher, to clean and remove the hoard of useless objects left in the home. Using a metaphor, the neighborhood boys compare the sudden rush of objects, from trash to personal mementoes, to a “tidal wave”: 

But despite all this new evidence of the girls’ lives, and of the sudden drop-off of family togetherness (the photos virtually cease about the time Therese turned twelve), we learned little more about the girls than we knew already. It felt as though the house could keep disgorging debris forever, a tidal wave of unmatched slippers and dresses scarecrowed on hangers, and after sifting through it all we would still know nothing. There came an end to the outflow, however. Three days after Mr. Hedlie forged into the house, he came out, opening the front door for the first time [...]

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