What is the author's style in The Way It Felt to Be Falling by Kim Edwards?

A metaphor is a figure or speech in which one word, used to mean something literally, is used to figuratively represent another thing in order to create a new understanding in the mind of (in this case) the reader. This technique is used to give a work of literature more impact, by forcing readers to think about a concept in a different way. In the story, Kate equates falling with madness. Both Kate and readers realize that falling and madness are two separate ideas, but the way Kate describes it, a reader can easily see that the sensation of falling is an appropriate way to figuratively describe madness. Says Kate in the beginning: "Take care I said each time we left my father. . . . And I listened to my own words; I took care, too. That summer, I was afraid of falling." Kate starts to hang out more with Stephen after her father goes into the hospital, because she thinks that, with his mental instability, he can help Kate make sense of what it means to be falling. Says Kate, "I knew that Stephen understood the suspended world between sanity and madness, that he lived his life inside it." The metaphor of falling is underscored even more by Kate's decision to go skydiving. By directly confronting her fear of falling, she conquers her fears of mental illness. In fact, at the end, Kate objects to Stephen's use of the word "falling," when he describes how Kate "disappeared so fast" out of the plane. Says Kate: "It was the word he kept using, and it was the wrong one. . . . 'That's the funny thing,' I told him. 'There was no sense of descent. It was more like floating." With this change in her perception, Kate is able to abandon the metaphor of falling as madness, and find peace.