“she has become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked round her”

is this a simile? i know it has “as” in it but i’m not quite sure, and if it’s not is it any figurative language at all?

The great depression, which lasted throughout the 1930s in the united states, affected many people, and it had a devastating impact on an entire subset of the u.s. population. modernist writer john steinbeck wrote about the toll the depression took on these families, many of whom were forced to leave their farms and find other sources of income.