Chapter 9: Another Trap

[kmensing]

Sorry to go totally off topic, but I've been dying to ask you, who does pick the books and what what is the decision process?

I do not pick the books, but thank you for your input.

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[SandyS]

I too feel this way and mentioned it in Chapter 7, Breakfast.  Ginny traipsing around with a glass of milk made me chuckle.  Little else has.  I fear it may be the writing style as many of the incidents and Ginny's Rules are actually quite funny.  But they don't strike me as so while I'm reading.

SandyS

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Everyman wrote:
A general thought up to this point: unless I've missed it, which is perfectly possible, there is no humor anywhere in this book. I don't recall anybody laughing except for Ginny and Vivi laughing when they meet, and I think that's nervous laughter or relief laughter rather than humor laughter. I don't recall any amusing asides, any lines that made me chuckle, let alone laugh. This is unusual, I think, for novels; almost all of them include humor here and there (and often many heres and theres). But I find the the tone of this book is clinical and even gloomy throughout.

I'm sure that others have found funny lines or episodes in it. Where are they, and why did I miss them?

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[SandyS]

I am one of the readers struggling a bit.  I think in part it's because I am reading it one chapter at a time and then spending time on the posts.  I don't think I'm getting a flow to it.  When I go back and reread a chapter or two it is more enjoyable.

SandyS

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bettymac wrote:


I am enjoying this book also, but I am letting the book "happen" rather than trying to guess what everything means before its time. Maybe some of the readers who are struggling are judging too quickly before Adams has a chance to "show" us why we need to know so very much about moths and this crazy family.

[DSaff]

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detailmuse wrote:

Interesting that Vivi is revealed to be such a job-hopper. It fits her personality, but I don't know what to make of it yet.

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I found it interesting as well, but thought that Vivi was looking for happiness. While she knows about moths, she doesn't seem interested. I think she wants a life outside the house, and the family as well. We will see if she finds happiness.

[DSaff]

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ELee wrote:

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The dress was a green and blue peacock-print evening dress, which Ginny says "was the kind of thing she had worn when she was much younger" and goes on to emphasize that it "didn't suit her age".  I believe that it was the same dress Maud was wearing in the photo of her and Clive "embracing on a balcony in a foreign city" described on page 11.

"Maude is wearing a pretty peacock-print dress.  She's lifting her chin and arching backwards with happiness, Clive's arms looped round the small of her back, supporting her preciously."

Its really quite sad.  I think she was trying to recapture some of what she and Clive had when that photograph was taken. 

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I found this whole scene so sad. Maud seems to sense that she needs to do something to regain some control in her marriage, but doesn't get the response from Clive that it seems she hoped for. I am finding Maud a very tragic figure in this book and am hoping for more information on how things fell apart. It is easy to see Clive's preoccupation with the moths, but at what point did Maud actually see the reality of the situation?

[Carmenere_lady]

If you are talking about from the readers standpoint I suppose that all depends on what someone finds humorous.  Besides the milk episode I got a kick out of the refugee story and Ginny thinking that they were all her brothers and sisters.  However, if you are just considering the lives of Ginny's family I would say that there was little levity in the house.

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SandyS wrote:

I too feel this way and mentioned it in Chapter 7, Breakfast.  Ginny traipsing around with a glass of milk made me chuckle.  Little else has.  I fear it may be the writing style as many of the incidents and Ginny's Rules are actually quite funny.  But they don't strike me as so while I'm reading.

SandyS

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Everyman wrote:
A general thought up to this point: unless I've missed it, which is perfectly possible, there is no humor anywhere in this book. I don't recall anybody laughing except for Ginny and Vivi laughing when they meet, and I think that's nervous laughter or relief laughter rather than humor laughter. I don't recall any amusing asides, any lines that made me chuckle, let alone laugh. This is unusual, I think, for novels; almost all of them include humor here and there (and often many heres and theres). But I find the the tone of this book is clinical and even gloomy throughout.

I'm sure that others have found funny lines or episodes in it. Where are they, and why did I miss them?

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[umlaut]

I agree with Everyman, this book starting to sound like a *csi* crime drama. To me this chapter was a filler to the story. I believe the author needs to do little more work on her side. I get it that she is showing a similarity between moth and this family, but its over done. I would be very have been very disappointed if i had bought this book, but since i agreed to partake in the discussion i believe i should do it...so here it goes.


I believe Maud has finally realized or found out she has a severe chronic illness as displayed by the rotten food laid on the table might suggest she was also out of the house visiting doctor i have concluded this from page 101, "..in the kitchen a great pile of washing up haunted the sink and the overloaded bin smelt sweetly purid ... and apple core, browned with age.". As for Maud being shown as a drunk i believe she is not an alcoholic but drinking to suppress some chronic pain.

[paula_02912]

LyndaSue wrote: "My question for this chapter, Another Trap, is for whom is the trap set?  Is it for moths, Clive, Ginny or perhaps even us, the readers?"

This is a great questions LyndaSue...when I first read the title, I immediately thought of "The Mousetrap" scene in Hamlet...who is the trap really set for? I would add Vivi and Maud to the mix too...

[crazyasitsounds]

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KxBurns wrote:
Here's another possible reason for Clive's secrecy: he views Ginny as untrustworthy, either mentally or as a colleague...

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That's true, & I hadn't thought of that possibility. My reactions to the events in this novel have been strongly colored by the fact that they're all told from Ginny's perspective. Every time something happens, I take Ginny's narration at face value. I never want to blame her for anything.

I should know better.

[dordavis33]

Of course Maude was a bona fide drunk, but the circumstances that surrounded her may have made the fall into drinking all the more easier. Her youngest child wants out. She leaves home to go to London and she visits her family erratically. Clive and Ginny are engrossed in their work, once they hadn't even seen her for two days due to their work! What loneliness and anguish she must have felt as a wife and as a mother. She was used to being the life of the party and now she was alienated by her own family. What did her own husband do when he saw what a mess she was in the library, he "tutted and walked out." No words of comfort, no kind of emotional support, nothing. She turned to alcohol I think as a means of coping. Even if they were dysfunctional, emotional neglect by loved ones is always painful, and she found her escape--alcohol.

[dewgirl]

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pigwidgeon wrote:
Did anyone else think, when they came home to a disheveled house, that this is where they were going to find that Maud had fallen down the stairs? I was on the edge of my seat.

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I did not think that, but the line on p. 101 when they are searching the house for Maud: "round the back to the parlor where the meat hooks hang..." made me wonder if Ginny thought Maud had committed suicide in there. The use of the punctuation made me wonder. Now, I know that Maud dies from falling down the stairs or at least that is what Ginny has already said, but that was my first thought when reading that. Great theory, pigwidgeon.

[blkeyesuzi]

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detailmuse wrote:

What Everyman said? Ditto!!

I love a novel that opens with a puzzle, a slow reveal.

But I hate teasing and manipulation:

p.96 "It was 1959, the year that changed everything."

p.96 "...the year--I'll never forget it--that Bernard Cartwright threw down his challenge."

Oh boy, here we go! But the chapter dealt with neither of these, and (like Everyman) the last-sentence tease was the last straw.

We're 100 pages in -- let's get some forward movement!

And it's not that the science is smart, it's that it's uninteresting and seemingly irrelevant.

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Everyman wrote:
Well, I confess it.

I am finding the perpetual angst of this book and the way too many obvious attempts to create mystery to be too much for my tastes. The end of chapter 9, "I wasn't to find out for two more years, on the day Mother died, why he was so unusually interested in it" to be the last straw. I just had to sigh and say "oh, come on." If she was truly his assistant, why wouldn't he have told her? The only point of withholding that would seem to be for Adams to add yet another cliffhanger to a book that is so full of them that it's tiring.

And the moths. Yes, the discussion of free will was interesting as a philosophical discussion, but otherwise, how could moths be made any less interesting? I tend to enjoy books whose authors take me into unfamiliar realms of activity. Trollope and his fox-hunting; normally I have very little interest in fox hunting, but Trollope pulls me into it and arouses my interest. Dick Francis and racing: I have never been to a horse race, was not raised around horses, and but for a summer when I dated a girl who owned horses have had nothing to do with them and no particular interest in them, but Francis makes the smallest details of racing fascinating and draws me inexorably into that world. The campanology of Dorothy Sayers's The Nine Tailors, the Egyptology of Peters's Amelia Peabody books, have both given me great enjoyment learning about things I didn't realize I could be much interested in. But frankly I don't find anything of this sort with Adams and her moths. After several chapters of them I never want to hear another word about moths (but I know I will).

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I couldn't agree more! It was at that very point I rolled my eyes and said, "enough is enough!" I've had enough of the cliffhangers and empty promises to give us a real storyline. We're about halfway through the book and I have yet to see the point. By now, I should have been sucked into the story, rather than frustrated with the author. So far the whole thing feels rather disjointed. I'm disappointed so far.

[bookhunter]

umlaut wrote:

"I believe Maud has finally realized or found out she has a severe chronic illness as displayed by the rotten food laid on the table might suggest she was also out of the house visiting doctor i have concluded this from page 101, "..in the kitchen a great pile of washing up haunted the sink and the overloaded bin smelt sweetly purid ... and apple core, browned with age.". As for Maud being shown as a drunk i believe she is not an alcoholic but drinking to suppress some chronic pain."

Wow, umlaut, that is an interesting idea.  We can obviously see the EMOTIONAL pain of lonliness that she is trying to numb, but maybe she also has an actual physical illness that no one yet knows about.

Ann, bookhunter

[grapes]

I feel very sorry for Maud in this chapter. Vivi has left home. Ginny and Clive are constantly going to conferences together or talking together about the moths. There is no one left for Maud. When Ginny and Clive return home, I think Maud is at her limit of loneliness. She can't take it. I don't have the feeling she's drunk. There is a brown apple core on the table and a saucer without a cup. I think she's wild with sadness. She feels like an invisible woman. She decides to make herself seen, heard  and remembered by giving the gift to Clive, by dressing differently, using more makeup, etc. It angers me that Clive makes no place in his life for Maud. When did he stop forgetting he had a wife? He certainly doesn't seem aware of the letters coming home from Vivi. Does he know how much Vivi is moving around? Does he really love Vivi or is he just using her as a convenient business partner?

Clive is definitely not likable at all. The way Ginny describes him killing the small moth with such brutal hands as compared to the way she would do it shows he is so strange, peculiar.

[Jaelin]

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KxBurns wrote:

Hmm, so 1959 is "the year that changed everything" (p. 99)...

Here, we get a closer look at Maud's exclusion from Clive and Ginny's partnership (which Ginny describes as both "remarkable" and "wonderful") in the absence of Vivien.

How do you interpret the scene that unfolds on pages 104 to 107? Is Maud drunk? Do you sense she is desperate to gain entry to Clive and Ginny's little club? Or is our impression skewed by Ginny's point of view? Clive clearly loves the present his wife has chosen.

Why do you think Clive keeps his planned challenge of the classification system a secret from Ginny until it is revealed at the conference?

Does the title of this chapter have duel meaning, and if so, to what does "another trap" refer, aside from Robinson's trap?

Message Edited by KxBurns on 03-05-2008 12:40 PM

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It seems that Maud is getting left farther and farther behind.  Ginny and Clive are getting more and more tied up with what they are doing.  Maud is making an effort yet they blindly ignore it. 

I think the title is interesting since It could mean so many things.  I like to think of it as a trap for Ginny and Clive.  They are both so engrossed in what they are working on they don't see the trap.  This being that they are so consumed with their interest that they fail to see the world falling down around them.  It is very easy to get focused on something or doing it the same way all the time and not realizing that this is happening until it is to late or something or someone points it out.

Maud tried to point it out yet got no where since the other two couldn't see what she was trying to do.

[MSaff]

Maud seems to be realizing just how alone she is. She tries to make a nice homecoming for Clive, and it seems to backfire. He doesn't even seem to notice how she is dressed, but has plenty of time to spend with the trap. Maud seems tragically alone.

Mike

[TheBookette]

I agree with many of the postings that describe the probable chronic illness (mental or physical) that may be causing (or the cause of) Maud to drink.  I also have begin to wonder if Ginny doesn't suffer from a similiar issue as she seems to have some detachment from reality - i.e. not the empty house, physician visits as a child, etc.

[LeisaPS]

I found some humour!!!  If you haven't made it there yet, Maud and Ginny "giggle" at the top of pg 118 and then there's a little joke in the middle of page 120!  There you go....

I have to admit I was finding that the story was getting a little boring with all the technical moth-talk, but it has picked up a bit since I got to chapter 14.

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Everyman wrote:
A general thought up to this point: unless I've missed it, which is perfectly possible, there is no humor anywhere in this book. I don't recall anybody laughing except for Ginny and Vivi laughing when they meet, and I think that's nervous laughter or relief laughter rather than humor laughter. I don't recall any amusing asides, any lines that made me chuckle, let alone laugh. This is unusual, I think, for novels; almost all of them include humor here and there (and often many heres and theres). But I find the the tone of this book is clinical and even gloomy throughout.

I'm sure that others have found funny lines or episodes in it. Where are they, and why did I miss them?

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Message Edited by LeisaPS on 03-10-2008 02:51 PM

[Lildove3]

I applaud Maud for trying but lets face it she has nothing in common with Clive. Ginny is in my opinion

has taken over Maud's spot cause obviously Maud isn't #1 in Clive's life right now.

[KxBurns]

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dordavis33 wrote:
Of course Maude was a bona fide drunk, but the circumstances that surrounded her may have made the fall into drinking all the more easier. Her youngest child wants out. She leaves home to go to London and she visits her family erratically. Clive and Ginny are engrossed in their work, once they hadn't even seen her for two days due to their work! What loneliness and anguish she must have felt as a wife and as a mother. She was used to being the life of the party and now she was alienated by her own family. What did her own husband do when he saw what a mess she was in the library, he "tutted and walked out." No words of comfort, no kind of emotional support, nothing. She turned to alcohol I think as a means of coping. Even if they were dysfunctional, emotional neglect by loved ones is always painful, and she found her escape--alcohol.

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When you think about it, though, isn't it interesting -- since she seemed to be such an extrovert earlier in the story -- that she withdraws into alcoholism, rather than seeking solace outside the home?