I probably won’t even visit you there. Once you’re in Warren I’ll do my best to forget you. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But until you go, there’s no reason for either of us to be alone.”
WHAT?! How dare she?! So basically Alice is saying she will abandon Charlie as soon as his intellectual disability comes back! This is not love. Alice knew Charlie before the surgery. What a weird choice the author made: Why write Charlie as a character who loves someone who only loves him WITHOUT his intellectual disability? Why make Charlie’s love interest love him conditionally — like his mother and sister do? If the novel’s message is to love, accept, and respect people with intellectual disability, this is contradictory.
And this exchange happened right before the cringiest sex scene ever. The writing portrays these moments as “romantic” like the author is telling the reader that I’m supposed to feel happy they got a chance to be together one last time, but I feel the complete opposite.
