Hello hello.
So, I'm alive..and apparently a raging hypochondriac. No more twitching symptoms or near-fainting episodes since.
Caren's still in Basel, so things are fairly low key here. I'm actually feeling rather balanced and positive despite it being Tuesday morning. I got your text last night instructing me to "rage against the dying of the light.." It brought back great memories of our take-back-Monday-night solidarity.
Keen observation about the blue edits...I think you're right...we have our first indexical trace of our young author combing back over her writing. I was also struck by how superficial the edits are; it seems to me this is a very late draft. Though I'm still due to produce my first major novel, and have never edited one myself, I assume early drafts of even the most fastidious writer's manuscripts end up in a tangle of arrows and margin notes. This one is really clean. I'm also wondering what that mark is that the editor puts whenever Ms. Lamb uses a double dash --. My Brooklyn Rail edits are all done within the program. I don't think I've seen red pen-style correction since gradeschool. Isn't it amazing how different everything is with computer programs? We find a manuscript with real writing on it and it's like we've entered in a cave in Lascaux, France...
You keep getting setting details about Staten Island? I haven't read anything yet that would indicate a specific place or time, other than the reference to the "Eastern Seaboard" and something about "modernism" that would place it in after 1900 pretty much. So with the bridge being build it would have to be post WWII, pre 196-something. Staten Island sure has changed, it seems. I might have overlooked some setting details, though. I tend to read for theme. Our project is actually doing wonders for my comprehentsion from having to sort through all the minutiae.
There I go blabbity blabbity, talking about nonsense, while I withhold the bombshell that was dropped in section 4!!!
So, after dinner Rowan is whisked from the dining room into the salon by Mr. Reshevsky. He says in a very suggestive way that she could get "hurt" at Pleasant Plains Farm. What you sensed as Rowan's fondness for Cater was confirmed Reshevsky's warning that Aunt Lucy can be downright "ruthless" to those she dislikes and that Rowan might want to avoid making her jealous. Interestingly, the mishmash of styles (modernist mixed with colonial) in the estate - a detail offered in section one that I didn't think was important - was a gesture of sabatoge toward her husband, the "late" Mr. Dickson, who cared very much about the stylistic integrity of the colonial mansion.
Just when things were heating up, Chao came in to get jiggy on the koto, chilling the situation down a bit.
As he began his practice session, Rowan and Reshevsky left down the hall where aunt Lucy stood frowning in a doorway. As the three stood there, Mr and Mrs. Braithwaite brushed by on their way to Chao's recital. After a clamor and thud, (keep in mind Reshevsky, Lucy, Rowan and, it seems, the Braithwaites are all accounted for) Chao is found dead from an apparent ten-foot fall over the 1st floor balcony. Kind of a fragile man, I'd say.
Though there has been a death, probably a murder, I can't get the tone down. I thought it was some Agatha Christie "And then There were None" shenanigans, in that people-die-bloodlessly-and-now-we-have-a-cirme-to-solve way, but it seems that it could turn into something more macabre...or, it could go the other direction, the trauma turning into an armature from which to drape a love story. For all I know, It could be a book about aliens at this point, who knows.
All very intriguing.
You're up!
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