Perfection is written in a generally detached style, with straightforward, clean syntax and focus on visual details rather than interiority and emotion. Figurative language is used sparingly throughout the text, but Latronico uses simile to represent significant content or experiences. For example, “Word that a reception center would be set up on the site of the old Tempelhof airport hit people’s timelines like a blaring air-raid siren” (74), connecting WWII experience with the contemporary migrant crisis. The simile indicates the importance of both the plot point to the novel—the origin of Anna and Tom’s involvement in the migrant crisis—and the novel’s themes of generational differences and their feeling that “Previous generations had had a much easier time working out who they were and what they stood for” (71).

The role of social media in Anna and Tom’s lives is significant. Latronico uses three similes in a row to describe the experience of its distracting properties. The influx of images from various social media platforms is “like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tunic into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people” (54), but then immediately clarifies that it wasn’t actually like any of those things, “because it was new” (54) and therefore impossible to define. Similarly, they follow political debates on social media “as the driver who slows down to gawp at a road accident forgets where he’s driving to” (55). The use of similes speaks to the novel’s interest in the problems of comparison, excessive focus on image, and detachment—the similes offer comparisons, just as Anna and Tom are forever comparing their lives to that of others instead of living more authentically and immediately in the present moment.