Friday, October 22, 2010
Paris
What's the Paris connection? The book opens there, at the Louvre with Gillian looking at British Columbian totem poles, and ends there, with Gillian and her college friend (Dominique? what is that relationship now?). One of Gillian's first clues that her relationship with Dorcas and Andre wasn't what she thought it was, was when she discovered that she was not invited to join them in Paris but had to look after their house and beastly parrot instead. And Dorcas is French. Does Gillian's being in France all those years later simply remind her of the events with them, or is there a deeper French connection?
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And what's with that damn bird, anyway? Much seems to be made of the fact that it has human qualities and animal qualities and that they can silence it instantly just by throwing a blanket on it. There seems to be some parallel there with how they allow the girls a certain freedom and wildness but always retain the ability to silence and control them.
ReplyDeleteThe Paris thing is a bit odd. I was slightly disappointed to see Gillian was still obsessed with this junk 25 years later. I had hoped she would have settled into a comfortable, normal life and could look back on Andre and Dorcas as merely a youthful mistake. (She did murder them, though, which I guess would leave a psychological mark on her that would be hard to shake.)
ReplyDeleteNot sure what's going on with Dominique, though I thought the text implied a romantic relationship of some sort. (Anyone else think it was weird when Dominique licked the tears from Gillian's face after the fire? In the first reference to that, I assumed Dominique was a dog. Gillian didn't seem to think there was anything odd about a friend licking her face.)
The bird, yes. The bird made me cringe a little, with the pecking at itself and Gillian and the squawking and the pooping all over the place. And how Andre and Dorcas seemed to delight in those distasteful things. That's an astute comparison of the bird and the girls.
ReplyDeleteI thought the text implied a romantic relationship, too, certainly toward the end when they're in Paris together, but also, more obliquely, early on when Gillian seemed sort of fascinated by Dominique and her exotic-ness.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes! The tear-licking! She did mention that as though it were quite normal. Bizarre. Maybe Dominique wasn't real, but just a figment of Gillian's strange imagination — thus the odd comfort she always gave.