Did anyone else feel that Sara and Richard were sort of thinly drawn? I can't help but think this was intentional, to make them seem more wraithlike in their foreign home and in Richard's coming death. (I looked up "wraith" in my dictionary to make sure I was using it properly, and it said, "the exact likeness of a living person seen usually just before death as an apparition.") I think Sara even felt like a wraith at times — thus her admonition to "Bring stones," i.e., something to weigh down the existence that was here, to give it substance, permanence, memory. I think that's a beautiful effect, but sometimes I wanted more of these characters, to have a more material feel for them, to get inside their emotional shell. Do you think, though, that that would have destroyed the specter-thin atmosphere of the novel?
Saturday, October 21, 2006
"Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies" — Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
Did anyone else feel that Sara and Richard were sort of thinly drawn? I can't help but think this was intentional, to make them seem more wraithlike in their foreign home and in Richard's coming death. (I looked up "wraith" in my dictionary to make sure I was using it properly, and it said, "the exact likeness of a living person seen usually just before death as an apparition.") I think Sara even felt like a wraith at times — thus her admonition to "Bring stones," i.e., something to weigh down the existence that was here, to give it substance, permanence, memory. I think that's a beautiful effect, but sometimes I wanted more of these characters, to have a more material feel for them, to get inside their emotional shell. Do you think, though, that that would have destroyed the specter-thin atmosphere of the novel?
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I never got to know Richard as well as I would have liked. Initially I thought that meant his death would be a plot point earlier in the book. I think you get an idea of his character (refusing to pay for the car scheme, refusing to pay for witch doctors) ... he's kind of like this gentle patron to the village, maybe embodying what he felt his ancestors did.
Sara's nun chapter (which I didn't actually love ... her fibbing made me uncomfortable, so I started glossing over parts of it), though probably said more about her.
Thinly drawn, yes. I read some complaints about this book that Sara and Richard weren't fully developed. We never know exactly why they came to Mexico or what their thoughts and motivations are. Even with Sara, when we are let in on her imagination, we don't get a sense of her inner reality.
And the interactions between them were interesting. They were clearly a loving couple — there were occasional subtle references to embraces and kisses and reaching for each other. And yet the conversation that we see seems rather distant.
I have the tendency to feel like Sara: on the outside, looking in. Left to imagine what might be behind their story, what might be happening between them.
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