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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
I see what you mean gmw! I think the silk shawl is covering the table. It was sent from India and it is embroidered with the tree, fruit, birds, etc.
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I think this is probably the only interpretation that makes sense, but it took me a few goes to get there. Thankfully from around ch12 or so the author gets a little less stylistic in presenting Grace's thoughts.
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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
Bookworm_Girl, you mention the deadbeat father. In Chapter 33 there is a short section which I interpreted as her remembering being raped by her father. Did others think this also? If it is not her father being referred to, it is some other man abusing her sexually.
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In chapter 33 it seemed to me she was always talking about either Mr Kinnear or McDermott. Grace remembers what she heard between Kinnear and Nancy in chapter 31 ("But I did listen afterwards, once they’d gone up; and I heard Mr. Kinnear saying, I know you’re hiding, come out right now, you dirty girl, do as I say, or I will have to catch you, and when I do") and seems to apply it to herself in some way, and she remembers claims made by McDermott in his statements, but there was nothing I thought of as applicable to her father.
In chapter 3 Grace says:
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They said I had a good character; and that was so, because nobody had ever taken advantage of me, although they tried.
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Can we take this to mean neither her father, nor McDermott, nor Kinnear got the better of her?
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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
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There are a number of suggestions through the book that she is telling an interesting story to please Dr Jordan, for example:
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It was a bit reminiscent of Scheherezade weaving tales in The Thousand and One Nights. Grace is weaving her long and detailed story to please Dr Jordan, but we have no idea of where the truth might lie.
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Wanting to please Dr Jordan, or wanting to manipulate the situation. I definitely had that impression. It was probably a mixture of both:
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he has an uneasy sense that the very plenitude of her recollections may be a sort of distraction, a way of drawing the mind away from some hidden but essential fact,
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Simon finds himself apologizing to her, and no wiser into the bargain.
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Dr. Jordan is writing eagerly, as if his hand can scarcely keep up, and I have never seen him so animated before. It does my heart good to feel I can bring a little pleasure into a fellow-being’s life; and I think to myself, I wonder what he will make of all that.
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What he wants is certainty, one way or the other; and that is precisely what she’s withholding from him.
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