Dicey's Song (Voigt)
Jul. 1st, 2017 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnNth reread. I have posts on Thick as Thieves, All the Birds in the Sky, and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch in the queue, but then mildred_of_midgard found several interesting cross-references between The Runner and Seventeen Against the Dealer (thank you for telling me about these!) and one thing led to another and now I'm in the throes of a massive Tillerman reread. Maybe I'll even get through Homecoming this time, although so far it's not looking promising… I have a plan, though!
In my reading Dicey's Song this time around, the theme of holding on and letting go is even more explicitly prominent than I remembered — but, you know, now that I think about it, this theme echoes and re-echoes throughout the cycle. In Runner, in Come a Stranger, in Sons from Afar… all of the books, I think, really, are about letting go of the things you have to, and holding on to the things you love, and how those things are tangled up together and sometimes are the same thing.
And I noticed on my last reread that the cycle's overarching theme (or one of them) is family, and this book is about the family that figures itself out, how it figures itself out, and is the one most explicitly about what it means to be a family.
I think this book is in many ways the thesis statement for the entire cycle.
And oh my goodness the resonances… I think Voigt must have had all these characters fully realized in her head from the very beginning. Jeff cites his father quoting Tolstoy about how unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way… setting up that exploration of family. And the Chesapeake Bay, which is its own character who really comes into its own in Solitary Blue. And the farm, which emerges as a character (asmildred_of_midgard noted).
And boats and music, both as motifs and representative of… what is the boat representative of? Freedom? Independence? Connection? I think all those things at one time or another. Boats are… a really big deal in this cycle. I think every book has a boat playing a somewhat central role. Oh no, wait, not Come a Stranger, I think? Which may mean something as well... Anyway. This book begins with Dicey sinking a boat (…Bullet's old boat, right? So it's its own character too?), then the rest of the book involves her working on it, and what it means that she's able to or not able to work on it. Interestingly, where Dicey is concerned it seems to be the process that symbolizes to us what's going on, not the result (as it might be in the hands of another writer). Dicey doesn't finish the boat, and that means something because the reason she doesn't finish it is because she' busy holding on. (HM. Bullet finished his boat. He was letting go, and not holding on to anything. HMM. Runner is probably the key to this whole cycle.) And then there's the failure in Seventeen… I think it will be much more interesting to look at that, this time out.
I don't know what music means exactly in these books, except that it's a way throughout the cycle that people are drawn together, that people in these books strengthen families and create found families. Interestingly… I think (?) the only book devoid of music entirely is The Runner, and even that one has poetry as a way to (sort of) connect.
And other things… Gram gets a phone. The same phone she threw at the phone company in Runner, when she became for all intents and purposes alone, and liked it that way (well, I guess, at least after her husband died; I don't imagine it was very comfortable until then, but from what she says in this book, she might have found her own meaning in that as well). She gets it explicitly because she has children in the house. So the phone, itself a means of communication, becomes representative of Gram's willingness to communicate, her connection, her reaching out.
(Geez, I want more fic about Gram. She learned all these lessons, slowly and painfully, that she's telling to Dicey in this book. What was it like for her?)
And the scene in the wood shop never fails to break me down. I'm just always a crying mess after reading that one.
mildred_of_midgard found several interesting cross-references between The Runner and Seventeen Against the Dealer (thank you for telling me about these!) and one thing led to another and now I'm in the throes of a massive Tillerman reread. Maybe I'll even get through Homecoming this time, although so far it's not looking promising… I have a plan, though!In my reading Dicey's Song this time around, the theme of holding on and letting go is even more explicitly prominent than I remembered — but, you know, now that I think about it, this theme echoes and re-echoes throughout the cycle. In Runner, in Come a Stranger, in Sons from Afar… all of the books, I think, really, are about letting go of the things you have to, and holding on to the things you love, and how those things are tangled up together and sometimes are the same thing.
And I noticed on my last reread that the cycle's overarching theme (or one of them) is family, and this book is about the family that figures itself out, how it figures itself out, and is the one most explicitly about what it means to be a family.
I think this book is in many ways the thesis statement for the entire cycle.
And oh my goodness the resonances… I think Voigt must have had all these characters fully realized in her head from the very beginning. Jeff cites his father quoting Tolstoy about how unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way… setting up that exploration of family. And the Chesapeake Bay, which is its own character who really comes into its own in Solitary Blue. And the farm, which emerges as a character (as
mildred_of_midgard noted). And boats and music, both as motifs and representative of… what is the boat representative of? Freedom? Independence? Connection? I think all those things at one time or another. Boats are… a really big deal in this cycle. I think every book has a boat playing a somewhat central role. Oh no, wait, not Come a Stranger, I think? Which may mean something as well... Anyway. This book begins with Dicey sinking a boat (…Bullet's old boat, right? So it's its own character too?), then the rest of the book involves her working on it, and what it means that she's able to or not able to work on it. Interestingly, where Dicey is concerned it seems to be the process that symbolizes to us what's going on, not the result (as it might be in the hands of another writer). Dicey doesn't finish the boat, and that means something because the reason she doesn't finish it is because she' busy holding on. (HM. Bullet finished his boat. He was letting go, and not holding on to anything. HMM. Runner is probably the key to this whole cycle.) And then there's the failure in Seventeen… I think it will be much more interesting to look at that, this time out.
I don't know what music means exactly in these books, except that it's a way throughout the cycle that people are drawn together, that people in these books strengthen families and create found families. Interestingly… I think (?) the only book devoid of music entirely is The Runner, and even that one has poetry as a way to (sort of) connect.
And other things… Gram gets a phone. The same phone she threw at the phone company in Runner, when she became for all intents and purposes alone, and liked it that way (well, I guess, at least after her husband died; I don't imagine it was very comfortable until then, but from what she says in this book, she might have found her own meaning in that as well). She gets it explicitly because she has children in the house. So the phone, itself a means of communication, becomes representative of Gram's willingness to communicate, her connection, her reaching out.
(Geez, I want more fic about Gram. She learned all these lessons, slowly and painfully, that she's telling to Dicey in this book. What was it like for her?)
And the scene in the wood shop never fails to break me down. I'm just always a crying mess after reading that one.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-04 04:22 pm (UTC)OMG, the wood shop scene, YES, and the Christmas shopping. I think they're why for the longest time I thought I liked Dicey's Song better than Homecoming (in addition to the former being the only one available on Kindle--I assume because it was the Newbery winner--and thus the only one I reread frequently).
The wood shop scene is so good I always find myself wishing the book had ended there. I know there's some closure in seeing how the kids deal with it at the end, and the importance of Gram opening up the attic, but I often read up to the wood shop scene and stop. I'm not much of a crier, but that scene always leaves me deeply moved.
One thing I do like about the ending is Gram telling them about the birthday Bullet got out of. It neatly complements the scene in Runner where she talks to him about it--and now that I think of it, both come at the very end of their respective books
“Are they going to a party?” Maybeth asked. “Momma looks like she’s going to a party.”
“Yes, they were,” Gram said. “Bullet — he didn’t want to go. He wanted to do some fishing or crabbing or anything that would prevent him from spending the afternoon indoors being polite. Now I notice, John doesn’t seem too happy about it either, does he? Did I ever tell you how Bullet didn’t go to that party?” she asked.
Well, of course she hadn’t, and she knew that as well as they did. So Gram began the story.
And there Dicey's Song ends. We don't get the story until Runner, right before Bullet goes off to war:
“You remember that birthday party?”
“Eleanor Brown’s? I remember. I remember you not wanting to go. I remember driving all the way back along the highway, to pick up the clothes you took off.” A reluctant smile moved across her face. “How you got them out of the back of the truck without us noticing, I never knew.”
“One at a time,” he told her. “I leaned way over, so they wouldn’t blow up into view in the mirror.”
“And I remember how you looked when we came around to get you out and you were just . . .”
Bullet waited.
“. . . bare naked, and laughing . . .” She laughed then, and he joined in.
“Anyway,” he said, “I owe you an apology. And Liza, too, because she was looking forward to that party, but she’s not around to hear it. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, I dunno,” his mother said. “It always seemed to me there wasn’t anything else you could have done. Being you.”
Speaking of the end of Runner (you did say to keep the links coming!), this jumped out at me, reading it shortly after Come a Stranger. Bullet talking to Tamer:
“If you’ll give me your word to stay out of Vietnam. Don’t tell me”— He cut off Tamer’s protests—“ because you can, you know it. Have another kid. Stay in school. Be a teacher. Get religion, whatever it takes. That one’s not your war.”
"Get religion." And then the next time we see Tamer, he's Reverend Shipp. Foreshadowing, at the very least, if not Bullet outright influencing the course of Tamer's life.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-05 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-05 11:23 pm (UTC)But it was not always the case that they were all available; I was constantly checking as they became available one by one, and I would like to take some credit for clicking "I would like to read this book on Kindle" a million times on the unavailable ones. ;) (I'm not sure Amazon processes more than one click per user, but I just like to register that I STILL want this book from time to time.)
I am not a print person, not even a little bit, as you can probably tell. :)
no subject
Date: 2017-07-08 05:21 am (UTC)Oh, that's neat that those scenes are at the ends of the books! I can't believe she put it so many parallels. Hey, look at this: I was going to wait until I could post this in a Solitary Blue post, but I can't wait: Solitary is also about a child who gets abandoned by a mother at the beginning of a book and emotionally rejected in the middle of the book. I can't believe I never noticed this until now (and I wouldn't have noticed it this time either except that I was trying to figure out why the heck Solitary doesn't trigger me at all (I'm still trying to figure that out)).
"Get religion." And then the next time we see Tamer, he's Reverend Shipp. Foreshadowing, at the very least, if not Bullet outright influencing the course of Tamer's life.
That just throws chills down my spine. I want fic about Tamer too!! We don't have any indication he's religious before Bullet says that to him (though we don't have any indication he isn't). Did that kick something off in his brain?