Chapters 10 through 13

[ELee]

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paula_02912 wrote:

This line reminded me a section of Pat Conroy's Beach Music, where the protagonist discussed how the people were separated and how, like Doctors, dentists and nurses, he was chosen to live because he could service those in charge of the camp by playing his violin...

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Paula,

I absolutely loved "Beach Music"!  It provided a slightly different perspective on a known theme, and I think Pat Conroy is a gifted storyteller and writer.  Thanks for reminding me!

[Tarri]

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KxBurns wrote:
Chapter 10: Bernard’s Challenge

-Bernard's challenge sets Clive up for either great success (finally making a big discovery) or great failure… How telling that he participates "against all rational judgment and time pressures" (p. 107).

-Ginny's characterization of the "mass execution of the local Brimstone population" is a bit frightening. Does her use of war terminology have any greater meaning beyond the fact that she and Clive are engaged in battle with Bernard?

-I feel such sympathy for Maud here and yet I don't feel that Ginny's guilt or Maud's treatment of her are warranted. Ginny describes Maud's descent in terms of "real Maud" losing sight of herself and "this Maud" taking over. What does this reveal about Ginny's perception of self?

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Well all I can say is I'm glad I worked for the phone company after reading the way they gathered, killed, and used the moths. 

I wasn't surprised that Clive accepted handsy Bernard's challenge.  Even though Clive thought it was beneath him, I'm sure that as an academic/scientist he had to prove he was superior. 

I feel sympathy for Maud, although her treatment of Ginny is so horrible.  I think that Ginny was always Clive's child and Vivi was Maud's.   I think when Clive told Maud that she had to let Vivi go, something in Maud snapped.  Before Vivi left, Maud was sociable and happy, but when left entirely on her own she was unable to cope with the life she had.  

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KxBurns wrote:

Chapter 11: Arthur and the Cannibals

-what is your take on Vivi and Arthur's relationship? How do you think the rest of the family feels? Are they going to eat him alive, as the chapter's title suggests?

-Ginny has entered into a partnership with Maud, supposedly to spare her dignity – and yet we know that Maud died an undignified death. Ginny's methods are faulty here; but can you equate her role with the idea of parasitism or cannibalism brought up by the chapter's title?

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I think it is difficult to judge Vivi and Arthur's relationship based on the information we have.  We don't know much about Vivi's life, except that she flits from one job to another and doesn't come home very often.  Arthur seems like he is trying to fit into Vivi's family and doesn't seem to notice that they are a bit off kilter. 

Poor Ginny and Maud.  I can't help but feel a lot of sympathy for both of them.  Maud is obviously at rock bottom and unable to deal with the loss of her daughter to the big city and her husband to his experiments, and Ginny want all to be well so badly that she hides Maud's illness to spare her dignity. 

Strange that Maud told Ginny that she would kill her if she didn't unlock the door.  Coincidence?

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KxBurns wrote:

Chapter 12: I Spy

-Ginny and Vivi finally discuss Maud's death and it comes as no surprise that Vivi seems to question Ginny's account. Is Vivi's skepticism really because she doesn't know about Maud's drinking and therefore doesn't grasp the likelihood of her falling down the stairs?

Ginny decides that it is "wouldn’t be fair to destroy her perceptions of the past" (p. 131) and I believe this sentiment will become central, regardless of which sister is deluded about what. As Vivi says, it comes down to "who is able to see things as they really are..." (p. 130). Is it right to hide the truth? Does it depend on one's assessment of whether the person is able to handle being disabused of their delusion?

Specifically, do we feel differently if it ends up being Vivi who has been deluded about her family, rather than Ginny being deluded about her family and herself?

If I were Ginny, I definitely would not still be covering for my alcoholic mother 45 years after her death, if indeed that death was a tragic accident.   But I'm not sure that Ginny is not covering up for her or Clive's part in the fall down the stairs.  Because Ginny so respected her father, it surprises me somewhat that she is not proclaiming his goodness and Maud's problems.  I think that Ginny feels guilty, even if she is not at fault, that she could not save Maud in the end. 

Vivi was never there, and doesn't appear to know there was a problem with Maud; however, she sure hates her father for some unknown reason.  Could she know about the drinking and blame it on her father?  Perhaps if Vivi had known, she would have come home many years ago.  I think there are still more secrets that even we don't know, that have contributed to this rift.  

Ginny seems stronger and more sure of herself as she tries to carry on during this very troubling time in her life. 

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KxBurns wrote:

Chapter 13: The Ridge Walk

-how does Clive not know about Maud???

-please discuss this statement by Ginny (it caps off the entire Fox Moth passage on pages 134-135, which I found fascinating!): "If you were born unaware, at least you'd be blissfully ignorant. It's not as if you're going to wake up one day and suddenly discover yourself."

-is Vivi's request a selfish one? I think it depends on what she knows about Ginny. Maybe we have magnified Ginny's oddness and how obvious it is to the world. One thing that is clear to me from this chapter is that Ginny thrives on the suffering of those around her. Feel free to disagree with this, but she feels "invigorated, revitalised and valuable" in the face of her sister's suffering! I know she's specifically talking about the expulsion when she uses those words, but she recalls it now.

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How does Clive not know about Maud?  Or does Clive know about Maud, but it is so unimportant in his view of the world that he leaves it to Ginny. 

I don't think that Vivi's request is a selfish one, just a tad bit ahead of its time.  If it happened today, we'd think nothing of the request.  I agree that Ginny is invigorated by the current state of events, dealing with the experiment, Maud, and now Vivi's inability to have a child makes Ginny the important one for probably the first time in her sad life. 

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pigwidgeon wrote:
I find it strange that, after all the discussion of the girls calling their parents by their first names, no one has yet mentioned that, on page 111, Ginny calls them Mummy and Daddy. At first I thought that the traumatic nature of finding Maud holed up, and intoxicated, in the library sparked a little regressive behavior, but then I remembered that she calls them by their first names from the earliest memories. What do you all make of this?

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What I find interesting is that she calls them by their names most of the time, but does call them by their paternal titles sometimes.  This is not the first time she has not called them by their names.  For example, on page 91 she refers to Clive as "my father". 

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Everyman wrote:
pheath wrote:
Chapter 10: Bernard's Challenge>

I think the "mass execution" is something that Ginny and Clive obviously don't give a second thought to. The moths multitude of moths that they need are simply fulfilling the predetermined mechanical destiny in the greater machinery of the world. I could not see Maud or Vivi approaching the matter from this mindset. I think it emphasizes the dichotomy in the family which in turn leads to the neglect of Maud. Maud's alcoholism is understandable as a means of filling the void that she has with Vivi out of the house.

I like this analysis. From being unwilling as a child to kill a fly, Gnny now has no compunction about slaughtering 50,000 moths to win a bet. If I had to live in a house with just those two companions, I might well be driven to drink, too.

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Ginny was unwilling to kill the fly in school, but I think that was because there was no reason to kill the fly.  She has a reason (research) to kill the moths, so I think in her mind that is justification.  Very strange. 

[kbbg42]

After reading these chapters I felt that I had really been so off the mark when in the earlier chapters I had thought that Ginny was a sociopath. To me these chapters really showed off just how naive and innocent she really is. She has become an enabler to each member of her family. I feel that Clive does know of Maudes drinking, he just doesn't want to deal with it. Maude is so lonely and depressed that she drinks more and more, but why is that? Why hasn't she turned to the life in the village? She used to give and go to parties, she used to go to church what happened that secluded her from the village people? I find Vivi to be more and more selfish. I truly feel that Ginny is autistic, tho high functioning, especially with the way she zones out, Vivi must know her sister isn't normal so how can she ask her to do this for her when Ginny might not even understand what she is agreeing to? Selfish all three of them, Clive, Vivi and Maude too.

[Oldesq]

Chapter 10 reminded me of fruit fly lab in undergrad- anyone else have this experience?  We bio students were given 2 different strains and had to breed several generations to determine which trait was dominant.  Mine were wingless and curved wings.  Fruit flies breed about two seconds after birth so we waited for countless hours for females to hatch (for a pure cross).  The memory made me laugh b/c I went to a Jesuit school and we had a very elaborate virgin celebratory dance with lots of celebratory drinking whenever we retrieved a true virgin. 

However, I agree with Everyman-- enough already.  This device was much more successful in Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees" or Ulee's Gold with Fonda.

I note that Maud's drink of choice is amontillado (p.114, 16)  "That's the one, finest old amontillado, Mother's sherry."  Is this a Poe reference? If so, is Maud Fortunato searching for that fine sherry and forever entombed in the basement that has been nailed shut as a result?

What am I missing about cannibal moths on pages 119-120?   Is the true answer b/c they are the only one left?  This exchange seems significant to me as Clive, Ginny, and Vivi all share in the exchange with Arthur which suggests ties and loyalties crossing party lines as it were.

I am just realizing the number of references to jam- this came to me as the cannibal moth is kept in a jam jar.  Remember the scene where Ginny and Vivi are putting the wax cover on the jam?  Also, it seemed as if part of the problem with the bell tower was balancing jam on toast.  Jam is the fruit of the earth squeezed and preserved- can that be the reason or is it just a common household edible?

In Chapter 12 why does Ginny describe present day Vivi's behavior as "another of her most maddening teenage tendencies" (p. 129)- is Vivi a child to Ginny or merely acting childish.

At this point I am feeling let down.  I enjoyed the beginning of the book so much but the "twists" and "turns" are disjointed and incredible

[DSaff]

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Thayer wrote:

I was struck during these chapters by how much of an enabler to Maud's alcoholism Ginny truly has become. She describes herself as an "accomplice" to Maud and as "standing guard between her and the outside world, protecting her against giving herself away." Does she realize how much damage she is inflicting? I also found it alarming when she says she "coveted the intimacy of the secret."

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I don't think Ginny realized that she was perpetuating the problem, at least not at first. She gets Maud's undivided attention, good or bad. Ginny is feeling important and needed, and I'm not sure she wants it to end.

[krb2g]

Vivi's depression at the thought of a childless marriage puts me in mind of a line of T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land:

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What you get married for if you don't want children?

--II: A Game of Chess, line 164

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It also makes me worried for her marriage: certainly whether a couple chooses to have children or not is a personal choice. But it seems Vivi can hardly stand the thought of being married without children. Does this statement imply that Arthur's just someone who's around and handy as Vivi tries to construct a life as close as possible to the one she wants or is it just an unfortunate way of saying that she can't imagine life without children?

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runnybabbit620 wrote:

And how awkward a position does this put Ginny in when Vivi says that she "can't think of anything more depressing than a childless marriage".

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[Oldesq]

The problem with The Sister is that there is too much weirdness here.  Every single encounter is fraught with weirdness and all of a different type.  Ms. Adams seems to be setting us up for a grand climactic event, a denouement which the reader already fears is unlikely to satisfactorily resolve this world.  Some novels are able to include a cast of quirky characters - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has already been mentioned or the denizens of the Pequod in Moby Dick.  But in a successful book, these characters are mere window dressing that add a colorful depth to a well developed core story.  However, the characters in these side stories can't carry their own baggage as they would sap energy from the main plot-- here, these extras are packed for a round the world tour:

• Vera with her alcoholism or STD or whatever ended her life in indignity
• Dr. Moyse with his card games, his creepy demeanor and relationship to the sisters
• Is Bobby a furniture seller or thief?  Was he acting at Ginny's direction or on his own?
• Michael the gardener trying to worm himself into the main house and have Ginny in the potting shed
• Miss Randal, the head of Lady Mary's, with her ideas on genetic disposition to felony
• Mrs. Jefferson the rector's wife (p. 50, 133)('So it's moths then is it, Virginia', and "Each time, before she went, she tried to pin me with her small powerful eyes . . ." ) 
• Rector Keane arguing free will versus determinism
• Bernard the professor (true professional), the groper, the source of the challenge  
• Arthur's excessive enthusiasm, his reaction to lunch at  Bulburrow Court, "he seemed extraordinarily appreciative to be with us, as if he'd won a golden ticket" (p. 116)

The Sister has used up the faith the reader has placed in the course of the narrative on several occasions  We feel heartened that Michael is willing to care for Ginny and look after her even though no longer in her employ only to find out his true motive seems to be a real estate deal. We feel we know Maud, the over enthusiastic community volunteer who people turn to resolve their differences, who knows everyone in the village ---only to find she is really an abusive, violent, alcoholic recluse.   We think we know the prestigious Bernard welcoming Ginny into the profession only to find he has other interests in Ginny.   All these betrayals are more than this slim story can carry.

Oldesq

[paula_02912]

Oldesq wrote: "I note that Maud's drink of choice is amontillado (p.114, 16)  "That's the one, finest old amontillado, Mother's sherry."  Is this a Poe reference? If so, is Maud Fortunato searching for that fine sherry and forever entombed in the basement that has been nailed shut as a result?"

Oldesq, when I saw amontillado, the first thing I thought of was "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe. I used to teach kids in my 7th grade reading classes this story and it was interesting to see what they came up with. We often had great discussions about it too. I like Maud as Fortunato. I think the library is her tomb...because she is locked up "alive" very much like Fortunato and is dying with each breath/drink she takes...the ultimate death comes later...If Maud is Fortunato, who will play the role of Montressor: Ginny, Clive or Vivi?

[Oldesq]

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paula_02912 wrote:

Oldesq, when I saw amontillado, the first thing I thought of was "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe. I used to teach kids in my 7th grade reading classes this story and it was interesting to see what they came up with. We often had great discussions about it too. I like Maud as Fortunato. I think the library is her tomb...because she is locked up "alive" very much like Fortunato and is dying with each breath/drink she takes...the ultimate death comes later...If Maud is Fortunato, who will play the role of Montressor: Ginny, Clive or Vivi?

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paula_02912

I thought the basement was the niche but I like the idea of the library much better!  At present it would appear that Ginny is Montressor as she turned the key but Clive may step up.

[nmccarthy]

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paula_02912 wrote:

Oldesq wrote: "I note that Maud's drink of choice is amontillado (p.114, 16)  "That's the one, finest old amontillado, Mother's sherry."  Is this a Poe reference? If so, is Maud Fortunato searching for that fine sherry and forever entombed in the basement that has been nailed shut as a result?"

Oldesq, when I saw amontillado, the first thing I thought of was "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe. I used to teach kids in my 7th grade reading classes this story and it was interesting to see what they came up with. We often had great discussions about it too. I like Maud as Fortunato. I think the library is her tomb...because she is locked up "alive" very much like Fortunato and is dying with each breath/drink she takes...the ultimate death comes later...If Maud is Fortunato, who will play the role of Montressor: Ginny, Clive or Vivi?

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Wow. I love the way my fellow readers reference other works of literature and reveal possible tie-ins. I believe there was another example of yellow wallpaper or paint earlier as well. It will be interesting to learn during our chat with Poppy Adams whether she intended to reference these works or whether they are coincidences.

nmccarthy

[SleightGirl]

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psujulie wrote:

Does anyone think that Ginny's blanking our episodes might be why she is so obsessed with time? On page 4, she says "Every mintute lost -- if left uncorrected -- would soon accumulate to an hour, and then hours, until -- as you can imagine -- you could easily end up living in a completely erroneous time frame.

OMG that makes perfect sense.  The time thing has been bugging me for awhile, but I never put two and two together. 

[SleightGirl]

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Thayer wrote:

I was struck during these chapters by how much of an enabler to Maud's alcoholism Ginny truly has become. She describes herself as an "accomplice" to Maud and as "standing guard between her and the outside world, protecting her against giving herself away." Does she realize how much damage she is inflicting? I also found it alarming when she says she "coveted the intimacy of the secret."

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I don't think Ginny feels she has the power to stop her, it's hard taking the mother role over your own mother.  Also, she seems to think that Vivian has always been the favorite, so I think it's her way of showing Maud that she can do something for her too...I don't think she sees the harm she's actually doing to her.

[Oldesq]

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SleightGirl wrote:

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psujulie wrote:

Does anyone think that Ginny's blanking our episodes might be why she is so obsessed with time? On page 4, she says "Every mintute lost -- if left uncorrected -- would soon accumulate to an hour, and then hours, until -- as you can imagine -- you could easily end up living in a completely erroneous time frame.

OMG that makes perfect sense.  The time thing has been bugging me for awhile, but I never put two and two together. 

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Then it might be 10:30 in the morning before you even know it.

[SleightGirl]

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kbbg42 wrote:

After reading these chapters I felt that I had really been so off the mark when in the earlier chapters I had thought that Ginny was a sociopath. To me these chapters really showed off just how naive and innocent she really is. She has become an enabler to each member of her family. I feel that Clive does know of Maudes drinking, he just doesn't want to deal with it. Maude is so lonely and depressed that she drinks more and more, but why is that? Why hasn't she turned to the life in the village? She used to give and go to parties, she used to go to church what happened that secluded her from the village people? I find Vivi to be more and more selfish. I truly feel that Ginny is autistic, tho high functioning, especially with the way she zones out, Vivi must know her sister isn't normal so how can she ask her to do this for her when Ginny might not even understand what she is agreeing to? Selfish all three of them, Clive, Vivi and Maude too.

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I've been getting the autistic vibe too...especially back in the beginning when Maud was upset that Ginny wouldn't cry about her sister's accident.  Going inside herself and worrying about the time also make an arguement for that as well.

[nmccarthy]

These chapters reveal that there are differences between Ginny and Clive's value systems and the slide of Clive into insanity.

As Clive ages, he appears to become more and more of the mad scientist, disengaged from reality. We know that Clive believes everything, including self awareness, can be reduced to chemical and mechanical reactions. Maybe when he was a younger scientist, he believed that humans were different; that we have rational thought and feelings.

We see Clive's respect for nature disengage when he kills tens of thousands of moths to take up the gauntlet of Bernard's challenge. Now with Maud's decline into alcoholism, we witness his split from humanity; even his wife, a woman he once loved enough to please by attending parties, has lost all value in his mind. He has truly descended into the mad scientist role. On page 116, Ginny felt a responsibility to ensure the diner party with Arthur went smoothly. For Clive, she felt responsible to "...translate for him between his own world and the real one."

I hypothesized that Ginny's behaviors could be related to an introverted, analytical personality and that her personality seemed to resemble Clive's. Further reading and the trance-like states Vivi witnesses lead me to believe that she is also a deep thinker and most likely highly intelligent. I know people like this. A person like this will disengage from a group conversation for five minutes or so, and then out of the blue, the person blurts out deeper thoughts and analysis of what was discussed five minutes earlier. The person wasn't even aware that we were on a different topic by then, so deep in thought were they. I am not an expert in this field whatsoever, but I have read where for some of our past geniuses, the line between genius and insanity was a tightrope.

Ginny still has emotional attachments to her family. At the family dinner party on page 116, she felt a need to make Arthur feel welcome for Vivi's sake and to cover up Maud's secret (misguidedly) to protect Maud and Vivi. She is also excited for her sister's impending marriage in chapter 13.

However, on page 135, we see that for Ginny, the Fox moth has lost the reason for existance, its point of living, in her eyes as it is just a poor unconcious creature that has no self awareness.

I am curious as to whether Ginny will descend or has descended along the same mad scientist path. The fact that she no longer practices moth science may indicate a conscious break from the mad sicentist route. However, I wonder if she didn't see the alcoholic Maud as an unconscious creature without self awareness; did she feel a responsibility to carry out Maud's wishes to let her die with dignity?

I am trying to follow Everyman's advice to read only as far as we discuss, but I am really interested in seeing where Poppy Adams is taking this book.

nmccarthy

[KxBurns]

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LisaMM wrote:
I saw the baby request coming. I think all the talk about how "it was the virgins we particularly prized" and "we hung the scent of virgins all over the grounds" and "males will seek it out from up to 5 miles away" and how the scent was "the most powerful aphrodisiac known to nature". Maybe this is all symbolism (a bit heavy handed).

My guess, having read no further as of yet, is that Ginny will agree to have Vivi and Arthur's baby, but Arthur and Ginny will betray Vivi by falling in love. Just a guess. A betrayal like that could explain the almost 50 year separation between the sisters.

Doesn't it seem, in reading about their younger years, that Ginny is more normal than we originally thought?

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You have all made some really insightful comments on this round of chapters. I like that we're getting away a little bit from labelling Ginny as this or that, now that we see her in her youth as a more stable figure, as Lisa and CarrieL. point out.

Either the passage of time (which, as we know already, is something to be feared if it is not kept in check) has contributed to Ginny's mental deterioration or her transformation is precipitated by some event. 

[KxBurns]

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pheath wrote:

The "partnership" between Ginny and Maud is something that Ginny seems to do with good intentions. It seems like a leap to me to equate this to a parasitic relationship where she is trying to take advantage of Maud.

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I do think Ginny's enabling of Maud's alcoholism is partially motivated by a combination love and guilt -- but Ginny herself says that she's ashamed to admit that she enjoyed the intimacy that their shared secret allowed, an intimacy that mimics Maud's formerly close relationship with Vivi. And Ginny says she doesn't just enjoy it but she looks forward to it. To me, this is parasitic in that she is benefitting from Maud's worsening illness and she knows it. She may not be taking advantage per se, but she is thriving on Maud's weakness.

I might discount it still were it not for her reaction to Vivi's moments of neediness, from which Ginny also extracts strength/enjoyment. Is it a coincidence that the time period when Ginny appears the most coherent and "normal" is also a time of great need for her mother and sister?

What I'm getting at is that I just have a hunch that Ginny is going to turn out to be the cannibal. It's sort of like how the cannibal moths have "just got a look about them," according to Vivi -- we can just tell that something is off with Ginny but we're struggling to put a precise name on it.   

[KxBurns]

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ladytoad wrote:

Chapter 13:

"I like winter. I like its contradictions: cold but cozy, sparse but beautiful, lifeless but not soulless." This line from page 132 makes me think of the moths again. It's cold outside, but cozy inside the cocoon. The moths are sparse, but they can be beautiful when seen in the right light. And even in hibernation, when they are not showing signs of life, they still have a soul (unless you agree with Clive's version of science from Chapter 8. Also, I find Ginny's comparison to life inside the house to be interesting. Inside, she says, "it was worse--soulless but not lifeless."

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This is a great quote to highlight. The house has definitely become Ginny's cocoon and it reminds me of the story of her birth -- how the snow was so high outside that they couldn't leave for a month. Is it Ginny's fate to remain trapped inside her cocoon?

[Peppermill]

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nmccarthy wrote {ed.}: ...I am trying to follow {the} advice to read only as far as we discuss, but I am really interested in seeing where Poppy Adams is taking this book.

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Nancy -- I've noticed that at least one or two of the people who like this book seem to have completed it. I am reaching the point of asking if modern writing lends itself as well to this step-by-step analysis as earlier works. E.g., is today's author writing for readers that have different expectations about the pace of a book than earlier authors could assume? Do more people speed read at least parts of a book? Does that impact the pacing the author provides? Does a book have a rhythm of its own and, if it does, what happens when that rhythm is disturbed? Or, what are the other questions we might ask about the impact of this very interesting step-by-step approach to reading to the reading experience itself?

[READERJANE]

I felt that the reference to thae mass destruction of the local Brimstone population was a shadowing of the destruction of the family's histopry that is coming in the story.