Month: May 2016

What Happens in “A Family Daughter” by Maile Meloy

Posted on by weeks4send

Abby, aged seven, goes to stay with her grandparents one summer while her parents go through a divorce.  Unfortunately, she gets chickenpox and can’t go out, so her uncle comes to visit so he can cheer her up.  Apparently, this is why they have an affair ten years later.  The moral of the story is, don’t let kids near their uncles.

After the divorce, Abby lives with her dad, while her mother goes off to “find herself” (read, sleep with as many people as she can).  Then Abby goes to university, and has an Italian boyfriend who won’t marry her because she’s not rich.  Then her dad dies in a car accident because she wouldn’t go skiing with him (I think).  Her uncle comes along to comfort her, and they begin an affair.  Definitely don’t let kids near their uncles.

Abby sends her uncle to see her therapist, who is surprisingly non-judgemental about the whole incest thing.  Because she’s a true professional, the therapist tells him that he might be his oldest sister’s secret illegitimate son (spoilers- he’s not).  Then Abby’s mother gets a new girlfriend, and asks her own mother if she had an affair with a photographer when she was young (spoilers- she didn’t).  Then her uncle starts going out with a spoilt heiress, who may or may not be cheating on him with her childhood friend (spoilers- she is).  We then get a whole chapter devoted to the heiress’ mother in Argentina, because plot focus is for losers.  The heiress’ mother worries about her failing health, so she asks the heiress to take custody of her five-year-old son, adopted from Romania on a whim.

Then Abby dithers about for ages before finally deciding to sleep with a guy from university instead of pursuing her uncle.  Unfortunately, this is quickly rendered moot because her uncle asks her to come to Argentina with him and the spoiled heiress.  Almost as soon as they get there, the mother dies and the son’s biological mother shows up.

Then Abby’s grandfather has an operation to improve his eyesight.  This also gets an entire chapter to itself.

Abby’s uncle sleeps with the biological mother, and decides to marry her and raise her son as his own.  Abby then publishes a book about her family history, including the part about sleeping with her uncle.  She doesn’t bother to warn her family about this before they read it, because she’s a troll like that.  Abby’s aunt reads the book and is reminded of a priest she had an affair with years ago.  Then the uncle’s adopted son steals a chocolate bar, and the uncle makes him pay for it.  The biological mother gets in touch with her lawyer and says she wants to go back to Romania, after which Abby’s aunt gets back in touch with the priest and starts up the affair again, after which Abby’s mum breaks up with her girlfriend and gets back in touch with her childhood sweetheart.  Everything in that last sentence happened in the course of about twenty pages, by the way.

The whole family meets up for Thanksgiving, except for Abby’s aunt, who’s off with her new boyfriend.  Unfortunately, her boyfriend goes bananas in public after her son comes to get her, causing her to leave.  Then Abby sleeps with her uncle again.  A few weeks later, they all meet up again for Christmas, joined by the spoiled heiress, who has a new baby and wants him to spend Christmas with a nice, wholesome family.  There doesn’t seem to be one around, though, so this lot will have to do.

Unfortunately, the baby’s arrival seals their doom, because he gives the entire family flu and Abby’s grandfather dies.  Abby blames herself for this, since the baby wouldn’t have been there if the heiress hadn’t read the book, but honestly, this story is such an unconnected series of events that she might just as well blame Timmy Mallett.  The good news is that she ends up with her university boyfriend instead of her uncle, so maybe there’s hope for her after all.

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“You changed what I said into a bizarre absolute.”

Posted on by weeks4send

I first read that sentence on the 16th of May 2003- my sixteenth birthday. To say that it changed my life would be a bit of an over-simplification, but not as much as you might think.

I read it in Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams, which had been one of my birthday presents (along with three of REM’s 1980s albums, because I was cool like that).   Obviously, I wouldn’t have asked for it if I hadn’t already known that I liked Dilbert, but I liked it because it was clever and funny and contained weird little surreal bits featuring talking animals.  Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that it might actually teach me something.

When I read that sentence (in a strip that can be found here), I did a bit of a double take.  That conversational tactic, that thing of “changing what I said into a bizarre absolute,” was exactly the kind of trick my parents pulled on me just about every time we argued.  You know the kind of thing- I’d disagree with something they said or did, and it would be, “Oh, so I suppose we’re the worst parents in the world, are we?”  And then the whole discussion would devolve into them naming other parents who they knew for a fact were worse than them, and me trying to reassure them that of course that wasn’t what I meant.  On some level, I realised that this tactic was less a response to whatever I’d said and more a way of getting me to shut up, but I could never find a way to properly respond to it.

Until now.

Over the course of that year, I learned a lot about how to argue and express myself.  I picked up skills from reading Dilbert, from watching Daria and the film version of Ghost World, and, strangely enough, from Ricky Gervais’ stand-up routines.  All these things taught me how to be precise about what I objected to and what I wanted instead, how to cut through meaningless waffle and find the truth, how to dodge attempts to derail my argument, and, maybe most importantly, how to be funny while I did it.  There’s always the temptation to idealise certain sections of the past and forget the more complicated details, but I don’t think it’s that much of an exaggeration to say that I started 2003 as an insecure fifteen-year-old who was pretty sure everything she said was somehow the wrong thing, and ended it as somebody who could sharpen words into weapons and aim them at any injustice I came across.  That sentence I read on my sixteenth birthday, along with hundreds of other sentences like it, helped me learn how to speak.

All of which is why it’s so upsetting to me that, since then, Scott Adams has gone completely bananas.

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Ivy (part three)

Posted on by weeks4send

We drove up to my father’s estate just as the sun was setting.  Despite my trepidations, I tried to face it with my head held high and a smile on my face.  I’d always been an eternal cockeyed optimist, searching for a rainbow after every sorrowful storm, and that guitar-shaped swimming pool I’d just spotted in the corner of the garden would do nicely, thanks.  He was loaded!

A strikingly handsome couple appeared at the door.  The husband, a dark-haired man with long, strong, beautiful legs and firm, round buttocks, smiled down at me.  “You must be Ivy,” he said, before glancing up at my mother.  “Hello, Gigi.  It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, and it’s going to be a while longer if I have anything to do with it,” said Mama, her hands on her hips, “Now, look, I’ve spent the last fifteen years raising your kid, and it’s worn me out.  Time for you to do your bit, sunshine.  You can give her back when she’s thirty.”

The wife, an elegant beauty in a camel-fur coat, scowled down at us.  “She can’t stay tonight,” she snapped, her face twisting into a grotesque parody of a smile, “We have plans.  Clive and I have tickets to the opera tonight- we’ve been planning it for months.”

“Now, Tamsin,” said my father, his smile small and pleased, “Love Never Dies isn’t exactly an opera, per se…”

“We’re going, Clive!  I’m getting my Phantom fix, or somebody’s getting hurt, you hear me?”

“Tough titties, blondie,” said Mama, flicking V’s at her, “She’s on your doorstep now, and she’s your problem.”  And before Tamsin could say anything in response, she jumped back into Abelard Cephalopod’s Mini and the two of them drove off.

To lift myself above the despair I felt at her departure, I gazed with interest at that awesome pool I’d seen earlier.  I watched the pet dolphins they kept in the deep end perform a perfect dance routine to “Don’t Stop Believing,” and, for a moment, I felt less alone.

My stepmother let out a long, resigned sigh.  “I guess you’d better come in.  Damn it.”

As soon as I got through the door, I turned in slow circles, my breath caught, my eyes wide, staring, staring, until I got too dizzy and collapsed on the floor.  My stepmother prodded me with her shoe until I got up.

“I’ve never seen a house as beautiful as this,” I breathed in wonder.

“Nobody has,” said my father happily, “My parents had it built to their exact specifications back in the Seventies.  When I was a boy, I used to think there wasn’t a house anywhere in the world as fine as the one where I lived.”

“None with cocaine dispensers built into all the bathrooms, anyway,” grumbled my stepmother.  She turned on me like a vicious tiger protecting her young.  “Now, look here, missy.  If you’re going to be staying here, there’s a few things you need to understand.  I don’t want you telling anyone you’re Clive’s daughter.  It’s embarrassing enough to have everyone know he used to go out with that slapper Gigi Pratt, let alone that there’s some kid of hers knocking about.”

Oh!  How those cruel words tore at my heart!  No sooner had I been reunited with my father, the kind, handsome daddy I had longed for all my childhood, than…

“We’ll just have to tell everyone you’re a visiting MI5 agent,” she added, “They stay with us from time to time.”

Oh.  Actually, that sounded really cool.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” said my father, with a hearty laugh, “Now come through and meet your stepbrothers.  I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”

Stepbrothers!  My heart fluttered in delight.  How I’d longed for a brother as a child!  The happy days we’d share… the walks in the park… the games of “fetch” and the trips to the vet…

“You’re thinking of a labrador,” said my father, “Brothers are different.”  But I was so enraptured that I barely heard him.

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