What a meaty way to convey a moment of sudden comprehension or insight, as when you have had a piece of meat jammed between two teeth, which has finally found freedom.  Russell Hoban’s novel is one of the most imaginative I’ve read, both in its story and its use of language and metaphor.

I confess, I struggled to find an illustration for this one: ‘tooth pick’ didn’t yield much I could use.

‘‘Ah-h-h!’ said the driver, as if he had finally worked a bit of meat out of the tooth it was stuck in.’

Source: Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (London: Picador, 1979), p. 57