My stream of consciousness thoughts...
I hate books that start with a flashback. It always seems to break my concentration. The book I read after this had a flashback within a flashback. Ugh.
Also, while some of the footnotes were helpful, the vast majority of them only served to pull me out of the narrative. Did I really need to know who such-and-such was based on in real life? Or what building she was basing a fictional building on?
I didn't have much connection to Irene and after some of her thoughts about Brian, I took an active dislike. She was very controlling and selfish.
I didn't get any of the sexual tension between Clare and Irene, mostly just Irene's growing jealousy of and fury towards Clare as she began to suspect an affair and as she realized what Mr. Bellow might do if/when he found out about Clare. I can understand her anger about the dangers involved and concern about an affair but the way she went about resolving things, by not doing anything, was more than useless.
I think this is the quote that finally turned me against her:
Quote:
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She wanted only to be tranquil. Only, unmolested, to be allowed to direct for their own best good the lives of her sons and her husband.
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Basically, she doesn't think he is capable of making rational decisions about what is good for them as a family and needs to be controlled. As she realizes later, she doesn't love him only the security he gives her
as long as he does what she wants.
For the ending, it was ambiguous for me. Obviously we were meant to think she could have nudged Clare out, but nothing was said and supposedly Irene couldn't remember either so we don't really know. (Was this an example of an unreliable narrator? Or was this just the truth?) Like others, I felt like this was the easy way out of this story. No real resolution for Irene/Brian and certainly an awful ending for Clare's daughter.