Constant Reader

[Rosana]

Thanks Marian and Gail for clarifying the cultural implications for me.

And Jane, I had not made a connection between Veronica and the cook in Book of Salt. Thanks for reminding me of this character and to see the correlation between them.

I too am thankful for all the insight brought on from everyone’s comments. The book seem always more meaningful afterwards.

[Barbara]

That's one of the many incredible things about Constant Reader. Prior to finding it, I thought my love of the experience of reading a book could not be topped. But, talking with everyone here increases the pleasure exponentially.

I'm getting ready to return The Gathering to the library tomorrow and just wanted to highlight a couple more passages that intrigued me before it's gone:

There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.

I'm not sure if I agree with that, but it has me thinking.

And, when her father was mad at her after she started staying out all night:

But, though it hurt, I found that I was able to draw on more ancient hurts than that-and that is how I survived. That is how we all survive. We default to the oldest scar.

I'm not sure what this last one means, but I keep returning to it. Any ideas?

[Dottie]

Barb -- both of those strike a deep chord for me. I am right with Veronica in believing, feeling very strongly that we are given very few people in our lives to love. I'm sure Veronica is not meaning -- nor do I mean -- love in any superficial sense of the word but love in the deepest and most far-reaching sense of the word -- not physical necessarily but including the physical in some instances. And I had quite a few fingers left at forty -- I still have a couple of unaccounted for fingers and I'm halfway to seventy. That passage very much speaks to my experience of life and it is easy to see how it informs Veronica's understanding of her life certainly, in my opinion at least.

As for the second passage, I think she's saying that deep hurts -- such as the loss of Liam -- tend to bring back the experience of past hurts, more ancient hurts for all of us. Recalling hurts, recalling things which hurt long ago, allows us to know that we survived them -- gives hope that we will survive the newest, even the largest hurt, the present or most current hurt. Defaulting to the oldest scar -- the hurt we first experienced -- allows us to work our way through the latest -- allows a process of survival? I'm thinking as I go here but that's what it seems to me to be about.

[Melissa]

Barb, I love those passages too, thanks.

On the hurt caused by her father's disapproval, my own feeling is that Veronica fought this more incidental hurt with deeper hurts -- possibly not to deflect the anger or pain or to lessen it (though I think I know what you mean, Dottie) but more to make that pain fuel her determination. Access to her pain may give her the sense of controlling its effects -- thus it will still hurt, but she's more its master and less its victim?

[Barbara]

Probably the reason that I am hesitant to agree with Veronica on the first quote about love is that I teach small children. Beginning about now in the school year, I have a child or two who calls out, "I love you, Barb" on a regular basis. I always say, "I love you too" because I do. I've heard other teachers just say "thank you" warmly. Dottie, I know you've probably had this same experience as a teacher. Now, I'm sure this isn't the kind of love that Veronica refers to (and that's probably the reason for the noncomittal thank yous), but it certainly is love. And, I think I have loved certain friends of my children and friends of mine over the years. It probably has to do with the definition of love. If we are only including the absolute deepest of loves, my biological children, my spouse, my siblings, my parents, then I still have fingers left.

Regarding the scars, it does make sense to me to default to the deepest one. In that sense, you are using comparison to realize that this current one is not so bad. But, I'm not sure why she is defaulting to the earliest one.

[Jane]

I was wondering about the "oldest scar" myself. Why did she hang on to it? Was it the worst scar or is Veronica the type of person who cannot let go of things. It seems to me that everything eats away at Veronica and that she doesn't let things go. Maybe that is why she is so unhappy.

Jane

[Wilhelmina]

I think that Veronica defaults to the earliest scar because that is the place where the world changes from a safe and loving place to a painful one. I agree that she seems completely unable to let anything go.

I have really struggled with this book, unable to just toss it aside because of the beautiful passages of writing, many of which have been quoted here, but at the same time, being repulsed by the brutality and ugliness of Veronica's attitudes, particularly toward the human body. I can only account for such disgust for all things physical as a result of childhood sexual trauma. I'm very glad that this book was discussed here in CR. Without your comments to help me focus on the beautiful passages, I think that I would have found this book unbearable.

[Rosana]

Wilhelmina, your description that Veronica…

… defaults to the earliest scar because that is the place where the world changes from a safe and loving place to a painful one

hit me like a cold shower.

I am becoming philosophical here, but that rings so true not only in this book but also in life in general. It does explain a personal situation I having been facing with such precision I had to let you know that you just shone light in my understand – and empathy – for someone. Thanks.

[Barbara]

Excellent insight, Mina. I think you're right.

[Melissa]

I got a chance to consider this book again today at an in-person book discussion, where the following passage was highlighted. I think the theme of "touch" and "connection" links to the "few given us to love/fingers" quote Barb mentions above in #52 above. But in this case, touch could have both negative and positive effects.

This is late in the book, p. 244, at Liam's funeral:

'Leave your mother alone,' says Tom.

Indeed. I have been so much touched these last few days. I cross my legs over the memory of the sex we had the night of the wake. Or he had. And wait for the Mass to begin. Everyone wants a bit of me. And it has nothing to do with what I might want, or what my body might want, whatever that might be -- God knows it is a long time since I knew. There I am, sitting on a church bench in my own meat: pawed, used, loved, and very lonely.

Actually, I do know what I want. I want whoever touched the small of my back in Mammy's kitchen to declare himself. To say, again, that everything will be all right. Because I felt someone's loving touch, and I was -- but completely -- reassured by it, before I turned to see that there was no one there.