If you’re new, you can catch up here.
I am so happy you have made it this far with us. You are now free (were you ever hampered in any way) of concerns about spoilers or getting ahead of yourself. Please feel free to talk about any aspect of the novel, but I INSIST we cover the following:
1. Lorraine. A graduate-level seminar on Lorraine. A casting session for Film Adaptation Lorraine (see also: everyone.) All things Lorraine. The inner workings of Lorraine.
2. FAIRYTALES.
3. TiPierre.
4. THE RESTAURANT SCENE.
5. Oh, God, everything. Mallory (correctly) makes fun of how books are always being described as “searing,” but this is actually a searing book, which is why we need to stop using it as a descriptor for other, less-searing books. I cannot remember the last time I was so shaken by a book, or the last time I read a book so quickly, but still had to set it down for little two-minute intervals while I got myself together. Everything I’ve read since (unfairly) has seemed a little fussy and mannered to me.
If you have questions for Roxane, now would actually be a great time to pose them in the comments! And if you live in Toronto and would like to discuss this book in person with a bunch of neat women and some dudes, you can make that happen.
LORRAINE. I will gather my thoughts and return but for now I’d like to nominate Joan Allen for casting.
I imagined her to be more like Katy Bates:
Oh, I think Kathy Bates could do a bang-up job.
YES EXACTLY
I didn’t realize it until now, but you’re right- I was totally picturing Kathy Bates.
I thought the same!
Or Melissa Leo, maybe?
Solid choice!
I totally pictured Melissa Leo.
Oh my god a million thoughts, but the RESTAURANT SCENE. I still cannot place my feelings on it. At once I was excited to see him reduced to that station in life, and wishing that Miri and everyone somehow did more (idk call the cops? Because we all know how well that often works?) and terrified that he could just show up here and be a bus boy like everyone else, but also not terrified because that is completely how this works, these people are JUST PEOPLE. It has been months since I finished the book and this still comes up.
And Lorraine! Punching bread all day with Lorraine.
I feel like the whole book, from the very first sentence (“a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin”), is about the absolute horrors that everyday people can inflict. Showing the kidnappers both in the context of the prison house and outside it–the restaurant scene, TiPierre at his house–drives the point home.
terrified that he could just show up here and be a bus boy like everyone else, but also not terrified because that is completely how this works, these people are JUST PEOPLE
My exact thoughts.
Yes, and somehow it was such a gut-punch to have him be “just” a bus boy. He was such an all-powerful source of terror in his old life, and so there was something there about how “just” a bus boy can be that person. But then also, what brought him to that place? Ransom money to get out of Haiti? It raised questions for me about him and his life in Haiti – the power and poverty he experienced there and what he gave up and gained in leaving.
Not sympathy – I was so thrilled when he ran like a coward – but it deepened the character.
(Coming to the conversation late – very late! – but I loved this book, and agree that it’s probably the most affecting thing that I’ve read in a very long time.)
I had to reread the restaurant scene several times, wondering if it was some kind of hallucination/wish fulfillment on the part of Miri. I realized that that reading doesn’t really make sense, though, because one of the things that I love about the book is that, although it uses the theme of fairytales, it doesn’t retreat into fantasy or hallucination: it is very brutal in the depiction of what “really happened” and how that can’t be escaped.
I keep thinking about that scene and having similar feelings of wish fulfillment/’fairytale ending’. It seems a little too convenient… she was with her beloved sister and husband (safety) in a place in which she had the upper hand (America in a general sense, restaurant as a paying customer) and discovered one of her kidnappers living a lowly life and being powerless. She also got to have some bit of revenge on her terms– she sought him out, attacked him and then let him go. It seemed like a daydream version of reality.
But Jaya’s comment above that these are just people is making me rethink this a bit more. I lived in DC for a long time and would run into people that I knew all the time, from places thousands of miles away. I’d be on the same train car as someone I had gone to middle school with in Florida; coincidences happen, so it’s not wholly unlikely that her kidnapper would make it as far as Miami and would end up in the same restaurant on the same day as his victim.
Oh, wow, my reading of it was completely different…or, well, my reaction to the restaurant scene was different, I guess. Because for me, seeing him there…I mean the whole time I was just going “oh god oh god oh no oh no oh no” because I wanted Miri to never have to see him again ever ever ever . So it felt much more like horror to me than a fairytale ending, even though, as you say, she got to have a bit of revenge, and things were on her terms at the restaurant.
Will have to go back and read Miri’s interior monologue in that chapter. I remember just being completely overwhelmed at that point, because I was so afraid — almost like viscerally afraid — that she was going to be hurt.
This book really got to me on a gut level, is what I’m saying.
I completely agree; this book gutted me.
I think since Miri was already ‘seeing’ The Commander everywhere and thinking that he had found her in the states (like in the corn field), this was the best possible way that she could be right even if it’s horrible that it happened. I also think she needed (and maybe this was Roxane’s attempt to give) some closure. She couldn’t ‘win’, but she could have the upperhand for once.
I read the restaurant scene as both terror and wish-fulfillment — it simultaneously made me feel the nausea/shakiness I’ve felt when seeing a person I hope to never see again, and thrilled me, because Miri did the kind of thing I fantasize about doing in those moments (but never follow through on.)
This was my reaction as well.
Lorraine should clearly be played by Sissy Spacek, who is exactly who I pictured while I was reading it. Either that or Matt Saracen’s grandmother, but she might be a bit too sweet.
You changed my mind (was: Kathy Bates).
Ohh! Sissy Spacek would be good, too!
I thought the character of Lorraine was an amazing, subtle way to look at the issue of Miri and Michael’s interracial relationship. I think we get to see their marriage, and see explicit and implicit judgment of it, through the eyes of several characters, but Lorraine’s disapproval is so tangible and so hurtful. I think the awful subtlety of her racism, and the way it changes, at least vis-à-vis Miri, is incredibly well written.
Oh gosh. I have to start with stating that I loved the book.
Deep pause.
But the number one thing I thought about it after I finished it was that the characters were unevenly written, and I felt that I had to reach inside to what the characters were really like, because there was something missing/miswritten about the way the characters talked. For instance Michael was sort of too extreme in his way of responding to Miri when they got home, and the way they fall in love and what makes them love each other is sort of…underwritten. Lorraine talks in cartoony farm dialogue, even though she’s a wonderful character.
The bad guy does slightly too much evil bad guy dialogue. The end of the book pulled me a bit away from it, because it all made SENSE plotwise, but didn’t make sense in the way the people were. I can see how a husband would insist his wife needs to go to a doctor in a way that freaks her out, or mismanage his responses to her, of course, but I cannot see how any loving person would lock her up. Doesn’t he even go back to work that day or something? I don’t believe it.
Thats me being regretful, because I thought overall it was extremely captivating. And I loved the idea of a prickly woman as a main character. In the other discussions people said they wouldn’t want to be her friend, but I really relate to the idea that an interesting female character can be prickly and strong willed. I would be her friend for sure. I think her husband was also an interesting guy- the idea of a confident guy with a weak core, because things come easy to him, that was a good angle to take and I wish he hadn’t come off so terrible, because I think some of that is how he was written, not how he was meant to be, but it’s hard to tell, right because can you really interpret a book character by the way you think an author meant it instead of how it reads?
Yeah so, thats my crit- this book had narrative/characterization bumps that I’m really looking forward to seeing smoothed out in Roxane’s next fiction book.
I also loved the book!
Agree that some of the dialogue was cartoonish at times, particularly Lorraine’s. And I had a hard time getting past Miri and Michael’s meet-cute and subsequent romance… I felt almost no attachment to their relationship.
However, I have never had such a physical, emotional reaction to a book before. Such that I’m not sure I’d see it if they made a movie. I can honestly say I’m not sure I want a penis inside me ever again.
Lorraine was a perfect character for Miri and really, the only one in the book who seemed to truly want to help her on her terms. I also love that she is written believably– she doesn’t always say or do the right thing, but she is actively trying to help as much as she can.
“There was nothing you could do but what you did.”
May we all have a Lorraine in our time of need.
Amen!
I felt like Lorraine was the only one who could see Miri clearly in this circumstance (despite their very real differences in the past.) She accepts her on her terms, like you say. Lorraine doesn’t treat Miri like she’s being crazy when she suddenly needs to run and hide and pass out under a bed for two days, or refuses to eat for weeks. She gives her space, and lets her do what she has to do.
But at the same time, Lorraine knows when to push Miri slightly, give her concrete things to do with her hands, participate in the world again slowly. She never stops being supportive and loving, even when Miri is fighting her (I think she knows it isn’t personal?).
I wonder if some of this comes from working with animals for years? (And I don’t mean to imply that Miri has become less than human, I know that far too many people have compared WOC to animals over the years, and I don’t want any part of that). But if something is hurt, or frightened, you often do what Lorraine does when Miri is under the bed: don’t crowd her, don’t stare, offer her food and water, give comfort (a blanket), coax her gently into the things which need to be done, but also make sure that her wounds get attended to in due course?
I feel like I am maybe posting here too much already, but I really want to discuss the bar scene.
“My father didn’t come after me. My husband didn’t come after me, but a redneck meatpacker named Shannon, a man with a raw dead stink, he did.”
OOH, that scene. That SCENE. Holy shit. So important for Miri to be able to say no when put in that sort of position.
Exactly. On my first reading, I was so mad at the bartender who recognized her and sympathized with her, but then basically abandoned her in her time of need. (Parallels are obvious.) When Miri went into the alley, she probably had a good idea of what was going to happen, but she also knew that she was not going to be saved by anyone else and that she’d be on her own to say ‘no’ and get out of the situation.
Yes definitely please let’s talk about the bar scene. I think I probably cried the hardest during that scene.
This was a difficult scene for me to get through because I understand wanting so badly to be rescued that you put yourself in danger.
Also: Dr. Darcy, who has a bit part, but seems wonderful.
I love that she realizes that Miri probably didn’t hear what she told her yesterday (because she was blacking out with pain and stress), and so the next day meets with Miri in her in a less threatening space (her office.)
Do we think she should have told Miri “This is not optional. If you want to have a normal life, or something like a normal life, it is not optional”… I’m not so sure? Necessary use of force, or should she have not pushed her so hard?
But holy shit, needing reconstructive surgery, oh my god.
Yeahhhhh, that reconstructive surgery bit. I had never even imagined.
I think it was necessary; I got the sense that Miri was so injured that she was not going to be healthy without the surgery.
Dr. Darcy was a really welcome contrast to the nastiness of the first doctor she saw. The doctor who didn’t talk to Miri, he just wanted to examine her. The doctor who she (rightfully) threw things at. He deserved having more things thrown at him. How was his capacity for empathy so low?!
But yeah. Dr. Darcy was wonderful and I hope she actually exists and teaches at medical schools.
I had similar feelings about the scene. At first I thought it was a hallucination and then I was a bit disappointed that it was real because it seemed too unlikely. I found it the only flaw in the whole story. I guess it makes sense for closure, but I'm still on the fence about it.
This is an unpopular opinion around these parts but: Fuck Lorraine.
I know her. And fuck her.
I posted this on the last book club post and I will copy/paste it here:
I am a black woman who has had multiple experiences with being hated by the mothers of non-black boys. Lorraine just made me tired and disgusted and tired of being disgusted. Miri had to PROVE her worthiness to this woman. I didn”t read her as loving at all. She felt a duty to Miri, for sure. But the woman is so racist she can’t even accept a black woman who her son loves. She doesn’t accept Miri until Miri does what Michael and Lorraine’s husband (Glenn? Gene? I don’t remember) fail to do: take care of her. Like a nurse. Or hired help. A mammy.
Dollars to donuts Lorraine is out there praising her daughter-in-law as “one of the good ones.”
Long time lurker, but had to comment because this book was so incredible.
The scene at the restaurant was a fascinating way to end the novel on so many levels. A few of the things that stood out to me:
1. How full of crap the Commander was. Throughout his torment of Miri, he kept alluding to her position of affluence and chastising her for not doing more to help the poor of her country. In fact, he blamed her for their plight and used that as a twisted rationale for the evil things he did to her. Yet, when push comes to shove, he uses the ransom money to bail on his countrymen as well. There he is, in Miami, in the same restaurant as the ex-pat he loathed for ‘abandoning’ her country. If he wasn’t already bad enough for how he had no regard for Miri as a human being, now he’s revealed as not even believing in the principles he used to justify his actions. If anything, this scene made me hate him all the more.
2. Seeing the Commander in Miami, so near to Miri’s home, had to be terrifying. Yet, in a way, perhaps it also freed her from some of the terror? In all her post-Haiti nightmares he was stalking her, as powerful as ever, capable of sending her back to her hell. But when she sees him in Miami, he is a powerless busboy, incapable of even defending himself against her onslaught. As a male, I don’t presume to be able to put myself into Miri’s shoes in that instance, but as horrifying as it must have been to realize they were once again in such geographic proximity, it must have been a relief to know that he no longer wields any power? Then again, even Miri wished desperately for Michael and Mona to follow her into the alley to ensure her safety.
3. Seriously, Michael? You don’t put two and two together until after the confrontation is over? There’s no outcome of that scene that would have resulted in any semblance of justice, but seriously. Michael seems to have good intentions at heart, but God he’s incapable of intuiting anything.
I really wish I had read this book two weeks earlier and also that it didn’t take me years of living in Toronto to find out that Type is a place and Down The Hall book club is a thing.
September was An Untamed State and October is House of Mirth! I love these people already.