Seeking a twist....
Dear Lori and Anthony,
Is any of this real? I realize that question may seem ridiculous, considering I am asking it about a work of fiction. In the contract between author and reader, there is a reasonable expectation of a suspension of disbelief, and up until now, I’ve had no problem accepting these eccentric characters at their (or, rather, at Young’s) word. Even the Australian bushman of Chapter 3, the bus driver, and Old Doc, all of whom I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. If they are not real men of flesh and blood, I am willing to accept them as something other – archetypes or metaphors.
But what are we to do with Madge and her sleeping husband? I suspect that the girl Madge claims to be jealous of, Jackie White, is just a substitute. Jackie is the version of herself that Madge feels she’s lost. The dancing girl with the hourglass figure has been replaced by a pregnant and married woman traveling on a bus next to a sleeping husband who is not the father of her child and who she does not love. It’s not Jackie Madge is jealous of, but that former version of herself.
Compared to everyone else in the novel so far, Madge’s story is the most banal and, because of this, the most suspect. She is a young woman, pregnant and abandoned, who married a high school football player out of desperation. It’s not an uncommon situation in books, films, or life. There’s something mercenary about her, bitter and not particularly likable. I’ve met men and women like that. I’m sure you have, too. And yet, her familiarity is why I trust her least. She doesn’t fit into the saturated and surreal world of Miss Macintosh, My Darling.
And so I realize I’m approaching this project like watching Twin Peaks, LOST, or a film by M. Night Shyamalan – leaning heavily into inference and speculation. I think the layering of mythology, or in the case of Young, language, and imagery, has me connecting them. I keep expecting Young to reveal a piece of information, a twist, that will re-orient the entire plot. Will that be Madge? It’s not lost on me that two of the three examples I cite at the beginning of this paragraph ended in disappointment. And I’m not dismissing the possibility that all of this is literary smoke and mirrors on the part of Marguerite.
I am still working my way through Chapter 6, and I feel like I will catapult through the rest of the book once I work free of it.
Yours,
Tara