Mark answers “can someone please explain this to me????”

Karen asked this question about Looking Glass Sound:

can someone please explain this to me????

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[Not sure I fully understand myself as it all got a bit convoluted, but here's my basic understanding...some of the book is reality and some of it is fiction written by the characters. Here is what i think is going on roughly chronologically.

*The early parts with Wilder, Harper and Nat are real. Nathaniel's father is the killer and Nat is the picture-taker.
*After these events, Harper becomes friends with a girl called Pearl. Pearl's mother is Rebecca, the woman who went swimming and never returned (murdered by Pelletier).
*Wilder goes to college and starts a relationship with a FEMALE student called Skye. Skye is actually Pearl; she has changed her name.
*Skye/Pearl loves Wilder, but Wilder is secretly gay and doesn't love her the same way.
*Skye/Pearl steals Wilder's notes and story and publishes it, becoming a successful author and leaving him behind.
*Wilder is very angry but eventually returns to Whistler Bay to find Skye and forgive her.
*Whilst there he meets Harper, who accidentally cuts him with Hemlock and kills him (whoops).
*Skye/Pearl is devastated by Wilder's death. She writes an account of their romance but changes her gender and name to Sky. So that section is kind of real but was written by Skye, complete with name/gender change.
*She also writes another story about Wilder, where he doesn't die young but instead comes to the bay as an old married man to kill himself...he is haunted by a ghost whilst there. He wants to kill himself but he doesn't because he conveniently finds his old love "Sky" in a hole in the cliff and rescues him. THIS PART ISN'T REAL - it's all written by Pearl/Skye.
*It turns out that Harper had a child as a result of her liaison with Nathaniel. The child, Gracie appears at the end of the book.
*It also turns out that Wilder's dad had an affair with Nat's mum, so Nat was his half-brother.
*So Gracie is the daughter of Harper and Nat and the niece of Wilder, she shares all of their blood and in some way she represents them all being back together again, in the bay.
*Harper is angry at Pearl for how she treated Wilder.
*Harper, Skye and Gracie are all to some extent into witchcraft. It appears that Harper has somehow used magic to insert Wilder into Skye's book. This is why the wordplay games appear between chapters - it is Wilder's way of trying to talk.
*At the end, Pearl leaves the Bay and Harper seems to be doing more magic to try to go back to the early days she spent with Nat and Wilder.

I have to say reading that back has made me laugh out loud, it was rather convoluted, wasn't it? I may be slightly out on some points but I think this is mainly what happened. :-) (hide spoiler)]

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