The Idle Book Club 14: Everything I Never Told You

[Jake]

The Idle Book Club 14:

Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You is another story in the "mysteriously dead girl" genre—so how does it stack up? Sarah and Chris discuss the story's themes of racism, family interconnectedness, and empathy.

Next month: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

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[Señor Superdouche]

Anybody else already started this one? I started listening to the audio book today while doing some work and now I'm already 2 thirds through it (I listen at 1.5x) - which is kind of stupid since now I'll have to wait a month for the podcast. Love the book, another great pick after last month's.

[jamesrcole]

I started yesterday.  Currently part way through chapter two.

[Hobbsicle]

Just finished it. I have mixed feelings, which is my cop-out review until I get some more time to think about it.

Also, hi, I just joined this forum, though I've been a listener for a while now.

[gregbrown]

I also had really mixed feelings about the novel—or perhaps more accurately, I really enjoyed the middle portion but felt nothing for the beginning and end. 

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The mother's trip to Toledo, and how the outcome shaped her relationship with her daughter, felt much more interesting than any other character in the story—enough that it even made the other storylines lively as the implications ricocheted to every character.

 Before that, the characters all felt like tropes, and afterwards they quickly regressed to the same. It didn't help that the prose was thoroughly middle-of-the-road: that same delicate writing that's endemic in MFA programs and quick-as-hell to read, but utterly neutral and unhelpful to any story aims.

 

A vaguely-similar work that I mostly loved is Top of the Lake, a BBC series about a young mixed-race girl who tries to drown herself in the lake. The similarities are mostly cosmetic, but the TV series was much more interesting in examining sexism/misogyny, small-town insularity, etc. by being unabashedly weird about it at points. Eventually it capitulates to the needs of plot and wrap-up and answers, but the most captivating parts are in the aimless sideways jags—something this book could have used more of, or at least anything that would set it apart as different from the dozens of other praised literary fiction books that come out in this vein each year. Kind of an arbitrary grievance, but one I felt strongly while reading. 

 

Also some Goodreads users are so bad at reading lol

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[gregbrown]

What did you all think of the ending? I'm kinda confused as to why Ng felt the need to keep throwing in twists until the very last few pages.

 

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A lot of the book's dramatic and emotional energy came from the family members reacting to new knowledge of Lydia or each other—so it seems odd to sort of undo their final acceptance that she was both miserable and arguably justified to feel that way. Positing her death instead as an accidental drowning seems to both reduce the meaning of the death and be a weird grope for a happier or at least bittersweet ending. And since none of the characters will ever find out, it just kinda drops there without any meaningful impact. Feels totally unmotivated from a story perspective.

[Argobot]

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Strongly agree with you on the ending. Ng had already made her point about how tragic it is that we can never fully know what another person is thinking or feeling, in much more subtle ways. I choose to interpret Lydia's accidental death as still being a suicide however.

  On 3/21/2016 at 1:51 AM, gregbrown said:

What did you all think of the ending? I'm kinda confused as to why Ng felt the need to keep throwing in twists until the very last few pages.

 

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A lot of the book's dramatic and emotional energy came from the family members reacting to new knowledge of Lydia or each other—so it seems odd to sort of undo their final acceptance that she was both miserable and arguably justified to feel that way. Positing her death instead as an accidental drowning seems to both reduce the meaning of the death and be a weird grope for a happier or at least bittersweet ending. And since none of the characters will ever find out, it just kinda drops there without any meaningful impact. Feels totally unmotivated from a story perspective.

[marginalgloss]

After a slow start, I generally enjoyed this, though I agree with Greg’s point that it was sometimes insipid. I'm not sure whether the author’s MFA experience was specifically to blame; often books like this feel to me less like writing by committee and more like the product of what is generally felt to be a style appropriate to ‘adult contemporary’ literary fiction. And who knows whether that's taught or unconsciously absorbed by aspiring authors or a combination of all that and more.

 

To me it’s a book which feels compromised by the expectations of a potential audience. There’s all kinds of interesting themes going on here, but the book seems reluctant to really engage with them. It’s like it wants to have racism and feminism in the mix, but it doesn’t want to be seen to be ‘about’ those things, so the form and style are given over to something accessible to a general audience. And so it becomes a kind of mystery novel when actually there is nothing especially mysterious about it.

 

Certainly the characters don’t develop much. The cast is small, and in each case you could sum them up their role in the book in a single sentence. Still, I don’t think that kind of limited scope is a bad thing in itself: the thing I liked best about the book is its narrow, intense focus on a particular story in the life of one family. And it does get a lot of good stuff out of those characters, even though they tend towards the trope-like.

 

There’s one particular scene, early on, which I couldn’t stop thinking about when I first read it. It’s when we learn that Lydia used to pretend to be on the phone in order to carry across the idea that she had friends at school. At first I thought this was a totally implausible kind of charade, but the more I dwelt on it, the more I realised that this was exactly the kind of thing I used to do when I was younger. I wonder if anyone else has any examples of things they’ve done to maintain a similar pretence?

 

For example: I never had to pretend I was sociable (thankfully I have never been burdened with that expectation) but when I was at school, I would often only finish the first page of my homework because I knew that some teachers wouldn’t check beyond that. Also I have texted goodnight to so many people over the years in the knowledge that I would not actually be going to bed but would be staying up very late playing video games.

 

About the ending:

 

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That comment from Goodreads amused me because at one point I really did think the book was going to reveal Lydia was pregnant (…but not by Jack. Make of that what you will!).

 

The drowning scene itself I found somewhat puzzling. The ambiguous suggestion that it might have been an accident — that Lydia was somehow attempting to conquer her fear of the lake — introduces a fresh note of tragedy that isn’t really required at that stage in the story. Alternatively, if it’s read as a final moment of delusional elation, it doesn’t quite fit with the mode of heartfelt realism of the rest of the book. Nowhere else is the reader given to suggest that what they are reading is anything less than what a character really did or thought or felt.

 

Perhaps the ending is the ultimate example of the authorial self-censorship I mentioned above. Perhaps the change in tone is required because the idea that it might have been a terrible accident is easier to present to the audience than the alternative: that Lydia might have found actual relief, even comfort, in the ending of her own life. 

[Argobot]

I agree that this book succumbs to safe MFA style (way more than Fates and Furies did). It's an interesting balance of the author telling a story we've heard a dozen times before (missing dead girl in a small town who was keeping secrets) and trying to examine the particular struggles of children of mixed race backgrounds. I don't know that she was so successful at the latter part. The best parts of the book are the struggle between Marilyn's second-wave feminism and James' fear of his ethnicity, but I don't Ng followed through strongly enough on those themes.

[electricblue]

I enjoyed it overall, quick and easy read and although the characters were remarkably unsympathetic (given the circumstances) I was invested in knowing what would happen to them. The asian dad stereotype was copied onto every character in the book and their inability to relate to each other wore thin, but the book is short enough that it never got too tiresome.

By far the weakest portrayal is Hannah,

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preternaturally gifted at knowing other people's hidden motivations, but an ultimately pointless addition except for giving the cipher in the snow something to do and to cover for the authors weakness of writing the interior lives of children. Hannah's only real contribution is having the impertinence of being born and ruining her mom's dreams. At the end Lydia tragically thinks the moment things went wrong in her life is when her brother tried to drown her and didn't follow through with it, but if she had Hannah's gift she instead wouldn't have hidden the cookbook which Marilyn thinks is a sign that she needs to be a "Tiger Mom" for Lydia to make up for her life's mistakes. James never questions this or his wife's reasons for leaving or anything really, his sole motivation is he desperately wants the kids to fit in because he didn't at his prep school... On page 180 Lydia reads a self help passage,

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"Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems"

which nicely sums up her parents dysfunctional relationship with her and, in inverse, her relationship to the rest of the world.

This sounds negative but I did like it. It was interesting to have the perspective of a single asian family in a small town, a common thing in the US that never is explored in fiction. Teach your kids how to swim.

  On 3/22/2016 at 9:27 PM, marginalgloss said:

There’s one particular scene, early on, which I couldn’t stop thinking about when I first read it. It’s when we learn that Lydia used to pretend to be on the phone in order to carry across the idea that she had friends at school. At first I thought this was a totally implausible kind of charade, but the more I dwelt on it, the more I realised that this was exactly the kind of thing I used to do when I was younger.

I thought that was a really effective moment. Both incredibly sad that she would do that to make her dad happy and sad that her dad is so oblivious because it conforms to what he wants to believe about his children. It also really fits with Lydia who doesn't care about making friends or the sections of the heart or anything but performing the action that will make her parents pleased with her.

[Stack Smashing]

The thing I liked most about the book is its focus on how sexism and racism, or more generally: tragic life events, can spiral out into family life and how insecurities and traumata are passed on through the generations and transform. Often into things that are very hard to trace back to their original source.

 

Reading the book I became very aware of the fact that some of the experiences my grandfather and grandmother had during World War 2 manifest themselves in myself by way of my father and his relationship to his parents. Basically that mental wounds of a certain scale don’t heal in a lifetime, but over generations. And even then only if many things go right.

 

The depth and quality with which the book explored this topic was sadly not too deep and I actually think that the book was a bit too long for the story Ng wanted to tell. Though focusing on a very specific experience was a great thing, and the experience she chose does feel underexplored in fiction and culture in general.

 

Consequently I really enjoyed the few details about the life of Chinese immigrants during the 30s. Looking back they almost feel out of place though, being there only to make a few points about James before moving on. (I guess this wasn’t the story Ng wanted to tell, but I kinda wish it was, considering her characters weren’t strong enough for the strictly personal angle in my opinion.)

 

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The revelation that Lydia didn’t want to kill herself was okay in my book, but the whole scene of her then stepping into the water felt somehow out of place. Also Jack’s homosexuality was maybe a bit much in terms of socially marginalized groups, considering the small cast. It felt constructed and like one more character that was there only to make a point the author already made quite well.

[jamesrcole]

I wanted to write down my thoughts without being influenced by what others have said about it, so I apologise for any things that others have already said that I'm repeating.  I'll read the other comments after posting this.

 

I liked the book.  Felt it had a substantial story, and some interesting observations.  The writing was mostly pretty good -- it was clear and pleasant to read, and some nice little bits of imagery.

 

My thoughts:

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It seemed to me the book is about why Lydia ended up dead, and that seemed to be because of:

• Racist and sexist attitudes impacting on people can create neuroses that effect how they interpret events and communications, and which can, in other ways, have a major knock-on effect on their children.  To a lesser extent, how having kids, and the devotion that requires, can effect people's dreams.
• The difficulties of communication, and the misinterpretations that can ensue.  Parents misinterpreting each other (like when Marilyn says to James about wanting to get a job and how he is against it because of IIRC not wanting her to suffer the way his mother did from her work), misinterpreting the kids (e.g. Marilyn misinterpreting Lydia's eagerness to work on maths problems with her), the kids misinterpreting each other (Nath and Lydia's misinterpretations of Jack).
• Also, the dangers of parents pushing their own desires on their children.  How this suffocates Lydia, while Nath who has been left alone ends up successful.

So it seems that Lydia was mistaken in thinking (as we find out near the end) that where "it all went wrong" was at the incident when Nath pushed her into the water.

Finding out what Lydia was actually thinking before her death, that it was so different to how the available evidence made things appear, and that none of her family or Jack would ever know those details, is incredibly sad.  And also sad was the naivety of her thinking she could just swim if she tried hard -- of how consequential that naive mistake was.

 

Some misc notes:

• Around the middle of the book it became fairly apparent that Marilyn's pressure on Lydia, in particular, was a likely cause of what happened to Lydia, and there was a (relatively short, and bearable) period where there didn't seem to be any clear mystery pushing the narrative forward.
• Felt the book could have done a little bit more to enable the reader to feel Lydia's fear of her mother going away again.
• It seemed very focused on explaining why things turned out as they did, and what it showed about the characters was mainly in service of that.  It felt, to me, like it didn't quite give a fleshed-out enough picture of what, overall, each of those people were like.
• I think it'd be interesting to read a second time around, with knowledge of what happens and why (e.g. on pg 106, which is set after Lydia has died, Hannah is looking at Lydia's necklace and it's mentioned that it's broken, but not explained at that point).
• Wasn't clear to me how, when Marilyn found the cookbook in back of Lydia's bookshelf, how Marilyn came to the conclusion that Lydia didn't really like the maths problems etc and really just wanted to spend time with her mum.
• Did the fact that Nath was someone different, like how Jack was different, part of the reason Jack liked Nath?  (which would mirror a major reason why Marilyn liked James)
• Near the end it seems to suggest that Nath ends up having an attraction to Jack ("when, one day, he looks at the small bump that will always mar the bridge of Jack's nose and wants to trace it, gently, with his finger")..  but that wasn't entirely clear to me.

 

On a personal note, I, like the children in the book, am half Chinese half Caucasian, and this was the first book that I've read with characters with that racial background.  It was interesting for me to see about the racism that James, his parents, and the children came up against.  I live in Australia, and was born the year after the novel is set -- there was a fair amount of racism towards asian people in Australia when I was growing up (but much less these days), but in my case, I don't look that Chinese, so many people don't even realise I have asian heritage.  Which meant that I didn't get much racism directed towards me personally, but I was pretty aware of the racism that did go on, and was in the weird situation where people would make racist statements about asian people in my presence, where presumably they didn't know I had that background.  

 

Anyway, I'm glad I read the book.  I hadn't heard of it before this podcast.  I've never done a book club thing before, either.  Looking forwards to seeing the other discussion.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Read the book (the whole book!) yesterday. Really not a huge fan. My thoughts:

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It was at page 55 that I first said "fuck this book" out loud - that's the page (in my copy, the hardcover) where the book has just finished talking about Marilyn and James's marriage and then it digresses for a moment to give a short history lesson on the legality of miscegenation by talking about Loving v. Virginia and I was like "come the fuck on." These history lessons really grated on me. Maybe I'm idiosyncratic but I already know about the Chinese Exclusion Act and Loving v. Virginia and all the other history shit the book clunkily tried to teach me, and even if I didn't, I would've Wikipedia'd that stuff. I don't need a simplified version of history summed up with a bow on the top. Compared to something like Fates & Furies, which didn't interrupt itself to explain to the reader all the little references, I got pretty fed up. It just felt like the book was talking down to me or something rather than respecting the fact that I might not be a 3rd grader.

What made me feel even more like a 3rd grader was the way the book talked about this stuff. Here's how the passage starts, which is typical of these didactical passages in the book: "Just days before, hundreds of miles away, another couple had married, too - a white man, a black woman, who would share a most appropriate name: Loving. In four months they would be arrested in Virginia, the law reminding them that..." and so on. I don't know about you, but this is exactly how a lot of history was taught to me when I was very young: in this sort of vignette story sort of thing that tried to keep your attention, rather than in dry textbook fashion. The explicit reference to the date and distance just makes it feel so fucking expository and educationy. Compare this to someone like Pynchon, who, in the rare cases when he explains his references, never makes you feel he's your 3rd grade teacher trying to keep your attention by linking it into a fluid narrative and giving you a mix of the facts plus a little bit of stuff to make it more interesting so you don't fall asleep.

I was a little amused at page 83 when Marilyn is reading the cookbook and one of the lines is "does anything make you feel so pleased with yourself as baking bread?" because I had a loaf of bread in the oven at that moment and it was making me feel quite pleased with myself - it was sourdough bread, which is more of a project than normal bread, and I get a lot of satisfaction from baking. It was sort of funny because the whole point is about how silly and crabbed and limited that sort of vision of a person's life is supposed to be, but I think the real lesson is that there's no such thing as a fulfilling or unfulfilling activity outside of the context it's embedded in. If you're a housewife, especially a housewife in this period in America without your own job, of course these sorts of domestic pursuits are likely to be anything but fulfilling (I'm surprised the book didn't try to give me a short history lesson about Friedan's The Feminine Mystique) but outside a context of oppression and sexism, baking bread can be super fulfilling!

On page 112 the book made me angry by making itself so obvious, like on page 55, except this time instead of a history lesson it's a lesson about racism. Here the police are not investigating Jack as much as Nath thinks they ought to, and we get a whole goddamn page explaining to us how maybe "in another town, or another time, they might have shared Nath's suspicions already." Okay, that's enough for me, I get it. But then the book continues: "Or if Lydia herself had been different." Gotcha, she's mixed race and quiet and so on, so they don't care. Oh wait it keeps going: "a Shelley Brierly, a Pam Saunders, a Karen Adler" okay thanks book you're making it super clear are you done yet? No? Okay let's keep going: "a normal teenage girl, a girl they understood." But wait, there's more, in case you're still not hip to what's going on! "The police might have looked at Jack more closely, pieced together a history of small complaints: teachers protesting graffitied desks and insolent remarks, other brothers taking umbrage at his liberties with their sisters. They might have listened to Nath's complains - after school all spring every day - and come to similar conclusions." Okay. Oh nope the paragraph is still going: "A girl and a boy, so much time together, alone - it would not be so hard to understand, after all, why Nath eyed Jack so closely and bitterly. They, like Nath, might have found suspicious signs in everything Jack has ever said or done."

Okay, phew, we're done. The cops, for a mixture of reasons but mostly racism, aren't conducting the investigation they otherwise would have. I fucking got that! I had that before the book even explained it, let alone pounded into my head, but whatever. That's the end of the paragraph. Finally! Now I can start reading the next paragraph: "But they won't. It complicates the story, and the story - as it emerges from the teachers and the kids at school, is so obvious. Lydia's quietness, her lack of friends. Her recent sinking grades. And, in truth, the strangeness of her family. A family with no friends, a family of misfits." AND THEN IT KEEPS FUCKING GOING. Like holy shit, I felt like I was reading a high schooler's explanation of the plot of the book, not the actual book itself. You don't have to spell this out for me! Stop telling me this!

Just a few pages later I got mad for a similar reason: Marilyn is angry at James and says "I know how to think for myself, you know. Unlike some people, I don't just kowtow to the police." Oooooh shit, Marilyn, wrong word! What a nice little moment to show both how frazzled she is in the moment, and thus how she isn't thinking straight, and how James is touchy about this stuff and thus is going to overreact by assuming she's racist like everyone else. I hope the book doesn't ruin this by giving me an entire paragraph spelling this out in detail so explicit that I want to claw my eyes out! Oh wait that's exactly what it does: "In the blur of her fury, Marilyn doesn't think twice about what she's said. To James, though, the word rifles from his wife's mouth" (is that the right way to use the word "rifles?") "and lodges deep in his chest. From those two syllables - kowtow" (in case I'm too fucking dense to realize it's those two syllables and not "police" or "unlike" - thanks book!) "- explode bent-backed coolies in cone hats, pigtailed Chinamen and Sandwiched palms." HMMM IT SOUNDS LIKE THAT WORD MADE HIM THINK ABOUT RACISM. GO FIGURE. And then in case you still don't get the picture: "Squinty and servile. Bowing and belittled." And then the paragraph goes on to spell out how James feels about Marilyn, etc. Like just doooooon't, book. Please. Please be more subtle.

This might just be me, but on page 132, Nath's anger at Jack rang... not quite false, but in contrast with the Ishiguro book we read last time, where everything just felt so accurate and true to how childhood and young adulthood works, this interaction didn't really feel like anything that has ever happened to me or like something that happens to people generally. It just doesn't hit me right in the noodles like practically every page of Never Let Me Go did. It feels more like a plot point than a true moment.

My unhappiness was triggered again on page 137, where the book transitioned the point of view like this: "Far off in Toledo, Marilyn did not hear the silent promise her young daughter was making." How clunky can you get? First of all, I'm already tired of the whole signposting thing that the book is always doing so that you can be halfway through your second handle of vodka, having picked the book up after putting it down six months ago, and still you'll know exactly what's going on. It reads like a play by play in a history book or a true crime story, not like literature. Maybe I'm just a snooty asshole who reads too much Pynchon or whatever and who wants things to be complicated just for the sake of it, but I really feel like the book doesn't take me seriously and doesn't expect me to keep a single goddamn thing in my head while reading. In fact, the characters never have enough depth or nuance and the plot never has enough complications for anyone to even worry about being confused, which I think really rubs in why I don't like the explicit singposting. Anyways, back to that crummy sentence: OF COURSE MARILYN DIDN'T HEAR THE PROMISE. First of all, Marilyn is in fucking TOLEDO. Second, the promise is a SILENT PROMISE. You cannot HEAR a SILENT PROMISE. You don't need to tell me that she didn't hear her daughter! Goddammit book.

The final nail in the coffin was page 229, when the book notes that "like all teenagers, she preferred - despite her very existence - to imagine her parents as eternally chaste." Two things I hated about this. First, the little "despite her very existence," which is either a dig at how much of an idiot she is (I don't think so) or (much more likely) another fucking obvious reminder to the reader. It's like, yes, I get it, her parents ARE NOT eternally chaste, because she was BORN from them and for that to happen they had to have SEX. Thanks for pointing that out! Otherwise I might not have realized she was wrong! Second, this is such a stupid tired shopworn false sentiment. It's not true at all - I for sure imagined my parents boning at least once or twice when I was a teenager because it was weird - and even if it were true, I've heard it so many fucking times in my life that it really doesn't need to be in a book I'm reading. It doesn't flesh out a character at all. It's the equivalent of a packing peanut or something. It takes up no intellectual space. It's just lazy and boring.

So yes, not a fan of the book.

[karlislog]

So, I only got hold of the book today, but still wanted to weigh in before the next book comes around.

 

Just finished chapter three, and all of the (non-spoiler) things you've all said before seem somewhat valid. If you think about it that way, yeah, Ng's style is very "typically contemporary" or "MFA", but I feel that she brings enough originality into the writing that it becomes a non-issue.

 

Since it's my first time posting here, I'll say that I'm a fan of contemporary fiction myself, and the author's style here is very reminiscent of the concise, yet vivid, illustrative style of, for example, Haruki Murakami. But what separates Ng's writing from that of, say, Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins and other authors of dark, modern mystery, is that she also embraces her similarities with, again, the likes of Murakami by banking hard on that visual imagery. From what I've read so far at least, she simplifies emotion to a degree that it becomes inherently visual, refraining from traditional delves into the inner thoughts of a character, or doing so via flashbacks.

 

I also want to mention the sheer fluidity with which she juggles the characters' point-of-views; the fact that a debut writer can so masterfully control the third person is quite a spectacle to observe. Honestly, the end of chapter three almost felt as if watching the last five minutes of a cable TV show, where some emotional, yet relatable song is playing, we see what all of the characters are up to, etc. and that's not meant to be derogatory in any way.

 

Will no doubt read the entire way through, may give some updated thoughts then, but all-in-all -- I'm into it.

[Professor Video Games]

I think this book could have been ok if the characters weren't so two dimensional. Each character had their single personality trait that contributed to the overall story (repeatedly). Like I got pretty tired of hearing James ask Lydia about her friends.

 

 

  On 3/21/2016 at 1:51 AM, gregbrown said:

What did you all think of the ending? I'm kinda confused as to why Ng felt the need to keep throwing in twists until the very last few pages.

 

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A lot of the book's dramatic and emotional energy came from the family members reacting to new knowledge of Lydia or each other—so it seems odd to sort of undo their final acceptance that she was both miserable and arguably justified to feel that way. Positing her death instead as an accidental drowning seems to both reduce the meaning of the death and be a weird grope for a happier or at least bittersweet ending. And since none of the characters will ever find out, it just kinda drops there without any meaningful impact. Feels totally unmotivated from a story perspective.

 

Totally with you on that.

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And if it was a reach for a more bittersweet ending, it totally missed the mark for me because Lydia's big revelation was undercut by everything else in that scene not making sense. I couldn't buy that Lydia would actually think that one bit of untested advice she received when she was five years old would be enough to enable her to swim to shore or more importantly, I didn't buy that she would see that last time at the lake as a moment everything went wrong and so the whole idea of needing to swim to shore seemed absurd. It's pretty obvious that the big moment was when her mother returned and she decided to agree to everything she asked, right? Maybe I've just forgotten what it's like to be an idiot teenager, I dunno, but everything about that scene just left me confused (and not because I thought she was pregnant ).

[Wartortle]

Overall I enjoyed the book. I found it an interesting illustration of the tragedies of misunderstanding, and while it seemed a bit shallow in parts it was a fast enough read that I won't fault it too much for that.

To expand on this idea of tragic misunderstandings, and in response to jamesrcole's comments above:

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I found the core misunderstanding of the novel to be in Marilyn's desire for a life as more than a housewife - and that when she leaves to try to finish her degree it causes a huge emotional backlash because nobody understands her true motivations. I think Stack Smashing hit the nail on the head, pointing out that the effects of a tragedy can span several generations, because to me that is what this entire novel is about. Most notably, when Marilyn resigns herself to not pursuing the degree, she channels her energy and desires into Lydia instead, hoping desperately for Lydia to have the life she always wanted, and we see how this extreme pressure plays out.

Moments where this misunderstanding is made obvious: James never fully understood Marilyn's motivations for wanting to finish school, feeling that he should be able to provide for her in the way his father was not. Marilyn's trip to her mom's house reminds her of her mom's empty life and how she desires more, which is why she leaves to attend school again, but James interprets this as that Marilyn was reminded of her mother's disapproval of their marriage and realized her mother was right all along. This misunderstanding resurfaces later when Marilyn wistfully says something to the effect of "I wanted something different" - she is talking about how she envisioned more for herself, but James thinks she is saying that she married him because she wanted something "different". It causes a deep but invisible strain in their relationship, that they only later will begin to "grope around for the right words" to repair.

 

I agree with comments above that most of the characters were fleshed out only in the specifics that would illustrate the central plot, and we didn't get a chance to explore their personalities beyond that. In particular, I really wish the author had expanded more on the relationship between James and Nath. The disdain James cannot resist expressing because he sees his younger self in Nath could have been an interesting dynamic, but it was not deep enough to become more than a stereotype.

As far as the ending goes:

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Something I thought would have been interesting is if the story from Lydia's perspective would have just stopped after she climbed into the rowboat and pushed off from the dock. Something that really stuck out to me in the final scene with Nath and Jack was where it talked about how they would continually be putting together the pieces, thinking each time that they finally understood Lydia. Ending Lydia's story at that point, as they can never know exactly what she was thinking after pushing off, would have framed the entire novel as their best attempt at understanding what happened. I like this because it leaves the reader to decide whether her death was intentional, and also gives a slight bit of uncertainty to all of the things we thought we knew once we realize the novel is framed in this way.

[Lechimp]

I enjoyed the book too. I can't really disagree with the complaints but I still felt like the writing overall was good enough to make up for that.

 

I'm also just really happy that the Idle Book Club is back. All of the books covered so far have been ones I probably wouldn't have read if it weren't for this podcast.

[Chris]

Episode is up!