Earlier in the character's life her siblings, parents and grandmother are the most important and they are focused upon and characterized with high attention to detail. As Shay mentions in her post we get snippets of each character that make us remember them: the sister with her tennis player infatuation and Mountain Dew obsession, the dad with his strange affinity to chase after tornados and hunt for fatal car accidents, and the mother's furniture that is covered in plastic. These are all details that bring us close to the family and feel as if we know them. It brings us as readers further into the text and invest in the character more than if they were just mom, dad, sister, etc.
Later in the character's life her best friend from school and their family are most important in telling her story so the focus shifts on them. She has always been eerily interested in the deceased, beginning with the little girl from her neighborhood who is hit by the car, and when she finds out Julie's family owns Kilner and Sons Mortuary it is as if she has hit the jackpot. Julie and Monica hang out at the mortuary and listen to the sounds that come up from the embalming room, they play in the caskets and a unique and strangely charming relationship builds between these two girls around the mortuary. When they are in high school and can drive they work for the mortuary and pick up dead bodies from the airport. It is as if the main character has finally found someone who she can relate to and a hobby that they both enjoy. Not many people would want to drive a hearse or feel comfortable hanging out "driving with dead people." This is where the unique experience of the character informs the voice and when the characters around her draw the reader in to this strange world that becomes familiar and not-so-strange to us as readers. I think the proximity of the characters to us and how Holloway moves people in and out like in a film that familiarizes the unfamiliar and makes this story interesting.
I was less invested in the character as she grew older and I think this is because I was less invested in the characters around her. The biggest example for me was the character Patrick. I did not get the feeling that he "was sexy in a Robert Downey, Jr. sort of way." In fact, I don't even know what this means. In my eyes he abused the character Monica and I didn't understand why she was still attracted to him or why she assumed he would be there for her after he got her pregnant. I think this character could have been developed more. Had she made me feel for him I might have felt for her more. I just saw him as a jerk who was high and stoned all the time and didn't see what was so appealing about him. I wish I did. That said, i think the Monica character became increasingly complicated at this point in the book and I liked that. The character developed a lot when she had to get an abortion on her own, hit up her dad for the money, drive herself back to school and lie to the nurse about having her boyfriend waiting for her in the parking lot. I realized there was a lot more to this character that had not been revealed in earlier scenes in the book that got to shine through here. Mainly, her strength and cunning personality. I was able to believe this about this character because of all the things she had been through before, mainly as her own guide, growing up.
As the book progressed I too felt for the dad and I also felt for the Daniel character. I felt that the dad deserved a chance which is weird because he abused his daughters and wife, but he was abused as a child too. In this sense Holloway did a great job of making the father's character seem vulnerable and pitiful. When the character Monica went to visit him on Christmas and no one was there, the two of them were eating alone, the ornaments he made out of plastic milk containers and other recycled objects stuck with me. It was such a depressing moment to see the effort he made with no one to appreciate it. It made me feel so sorry for him and realize his isolation and depression. The David character, contrary to most of the other characters, seemed abused by the Monica character, rather than an abuser of hers. I couldn't understand why she wanted to marry him if she was not fully invested, why she was leading this man on who seemed to care for her. I know I can't get too invested in what happened because it is in the past and it has been filtered in the book, but why did she abuse the one person who cared about her? Why couldn't she see that she was doing what every other man had done to her and be the bigger person? I will have to get over it.
The shift back to JoAnn was interesting. I think it was a way to try to resolve things with the dad. That said, I think Holloway did a cliche job of describing her sister as a lesbian because she made it seem like a direct result of the abuse by the father. I think that this is a very risky connection to make. JoAnn's sexuality could have been a direct result of that but it also could have been something more natural to her that her sister, the character Monica, could not understand. I would have liked her relationships with women to have remained very separate from her depression and her abuse by her father but it also could have been a realistic portrayal on account of the actual story. I just couldn't tell if it was a projection of the author's or a reality for the character which is something the author should have/could have cleared up.
The "wrap-up" feeling I get in the epilogue seems very Hollywood and it was funny that the first person Holloway thanks in her acknowledgements is her "savvy agent." The epilogue felt very contrived and I started to think of ways that Holloway could have avoided this. Perhaps it has something to do with the strict chronological ordering of events or Holloway's ties to the acting world giving her the desire to make everything tie up neatly like a play or a screenplay. I don't think the ending did her characters justice. I felt more of Holloway the actress come out towards the end of the book than Holloway the writer, but I guess it is hard for her to distinguish herself from one or the other as they are both aspects of who she is.
Hi Celine,
ReplyDeleteI like your many observations. Especially how you write how Holloway developed each character. I too felt that her character were fully developed especially when the abortion. During this scene Monica is desperate. She decides she'll have to steal her father's divorce papers to see what her Dad is legally responsible for. (I find this act gut wrenching—perhaps there is another motif of silence and denial -- no one really communicates in this family). This scene really made me dislike the father even more and presented to me the real extent on how much she was on her own.
She was eighteen years old when she had the abortion. I didn’t feel sorry for the narrator— but I got angry at how alone she was in her life. There were never any hints of self-pity during this time when she has the abortion or throughout the rest of the story. The narrator early on asks more than once in the story “Where are the adults?”
I had mentioned in my post that in the Epilogue the narrator mentions her father lives without consequences and I drew the connection to how the narrator describes her hometown: “no courthouse”– so there wouldn’t be any justice, any apologies. But I take that back. The father and the mother are responsible for raising their children, and the children were on their own from the get go. The consequences of the parents could be viewed as Jamie’s alcoholism and Becky’s denial, even though Monica and Joanne make it out, despite the sexual, physical and emotional abuse from both parents.
I think the narrator tried her best to make both parents sympathetic characters but the Christmas dinner scene did not make me feel sympathetic toward the father. However I did feel the courage and the commitment that the narrator had when she wanted to confront her father about the sexual abuse.
Celine,
ReplyDeletevery strong post (and although it's irrelevant, her survivor epilogue seems very contrived)
Taking issue with how a linear structure ties you down is a good starting point to show how this plot has a funnel effect. She has to store her characters for a while while she gets onto other things. Becky is a good example of that.
She does, as a matter of fact, find complexity in her father's character although we are given mostly the hateful things in his characterizations.
nice,
e