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cahnI was going to wait until I had time to go into Seventeen and get the textual backup for everything I'm saying, but I have gradually come to realize that if I wait until then it will never happen until possibly after Yuletide which isn't acceptable. Also I guess it would be even longer than it actually is. So. Here you go.
The theme of this book is pretty obvious (and is targeted by the title — I think all the titles in this cycle point directly to the major theme of the book except for Runner, and maybe that one does too, but it's too subtle for me to even figure out what the theme is). It's about failure, how we fail, how we approach failure, what we do with it, how we recover from it. Everyone in this book is subject to a mode of failure, some more than others — Dicey most prominently, but also Sammy (tennis), Maybeth (Phil, history (until the end)), Gram (pneumonia), Mina (Dexter), Jeff (Dicey). Which is why it's such a depressing book and everyone's least favorite — who likes to read about failure? And yet — this time around, I found it also to be an affirming and tender book, mostly because I was concentrating much harder on the non-Dicey sections, and because half of the failures are saved by the relationships between the people. (Sammy's tennis is hypothetically saved by Dicey, Maybeth's history is saved by Dicey, the kids and Dr. Landros save Gram, and Jeff and Dicey save each other.)
(And, of course, the biggest failure comes directly from a bad relationship/person, but we'll get to that.)
We get to find out what everyone's up to (which I'd somehow forgotten). Mina's going to law school come hell or high water or breaking up with Dexter (which in fact it looks like she's going to have to do if she goes to law school, and good riddance I say). James is at Yale and premed. (He's going to make a really interesting doctor!) Jeff's applying to grad schools. Sammy is playing tennis, and is apparently pretty darn good at it.
But let's talk about Dicey, okay, I mostly just want to yell at Dicey. Jeff is so right to be angry at her at the end, for all kinds of reasons, the first and foremost of them being the pretty much total breakdown of communication on her end and taking him totally for granted. But also for, hmm, how should I put this, the conflation of boat-building and boat-business, which are two different kinds of things, and I feel like someone should have set Dicey straight on this. (That being said, when I was Dicey's age I didn't know about insurance and contracts and such, and it's sort of surprising to me that Mina and Jeff do. On the other hand I was pretty clear that I didn't know enough to start my own business and I'd have to learn about all of that if I did, so I guess there's that.)
In this book there's virtually no community for Dicey (the people she does boat-building with aren't… people the Tillermans (or I) would really want to be a community with), which distinguishes it (and not in a good way) from the rest of the series, where building this community (or leaning on an already-built one, as in Stranger and Sons) was a main theme. And, huh, this looks a lot to me like a resurgence of the boat theme. Boats divide off people, and here Dicey lets the boat-building divide her from everything else that really matters, the people in her life — until the very end, when it becomes a way for her and Jeff to connect (as it was in Solitary).
…except for Cisco, who is a sort of pseudo-community for Dicey in this book (very pseudo, given what happens at the end). Now that I actually know he's Dicey's biodad, it seems SO OBVIOUS from every single thing he says — all the little microreactions, like when they talk about marriage (and that he hasn't actually been married), and of course when you know he's Dicey's father it solves the central mystery (in both the Watsonian and Doylist senses) of why this guy is seemingly totally randomly hanging out with Dicey when, let's just say, he is clearly not the type to be hanging around a kid like her who doesn't have anything to offer him. And yet I never figured out that he was Dicey's father, I had to have some random person on the net point it out to me (I can't even remember where I found it now).
One of the things that is pretty interesting is that Dicey understands Cisco on a deep intuitive level. She's always thinking things about the way she thinks he thinks about things, or the way their minds work in the same way, or knowing things about him (like that he'd give her back her money if he won). That kind of understanding is almost a familial understanding (not quite, because Mina and Tamer share that kind of understanding as well) — again, well, I'm shocked I never even had a hint of their relationship before I was told.
And he takes something that wasn't a success for Dicey, but which she could have pulled out to a certain extent, and turns it into an even bigger failure. Way to go, Verricker. Even more than that, asmildred_of_midgard pointed out, way to steal from your own daughter.
Various random thoughts (/speculation/fic prompts):
-So, you know, Mina sends in a videotape of herself dancing waaaay back when (I mean, ten years prior it must have been!) in Stranger, so it's a little disingenuous that it's the solution to Sammy's tennis camp and nobody even thought of it until then, it feels like to me, But, you know, if that's my biggest problem with these books, that's… pretty good.
-Man, I really want the Maybeth book. Sammy and James got a book! (Okay, they had to share, but still.) Jeff and Mina got books! Where is Maybeth's book?? Also, I thought it was interesting that Gram wills the farm to her. It's interesting because the farm used to be a curse — it was to Grandfather Tillerman, and also to Gram, I think, for a number of years — although it wouldn't have been to Bullet, if he had lived, and it's not to the grandchildren, now that it's being taken care of. And it is clearly a blessing to Maybeth. If she married, presumably she wouldn't need the farm… Does she marry? Or does she stay at the farm as a beloved unmarried matriarch at the center of a ton of siblings and friends and nieces and nephews (and chickens?? hee) who are always making life interesting? Or is there some other path for her life that Gram didn't see? I do think the narrative cautions us against taking Gram's word for it — after all, she wanted to marry Maybeth to Mr. Lingerle, whom (especially given the development of him moving to marry someone else HIS OWN AGE) I kind of imagine as thinking, "uh, she's a very sweet LITTLE KID but no thank you!" And THEN she wanted to marry JEFF to Maybeth (which, um, WHAT).
-I gotta wonder what Jeff and Jeff's roommate thought of the events of this book, like, Jeff's got this girlfriend he's Really Sooper Serious about who… never calls him… or seems to want to hang out with him at all… I just imagine Roger worrying about Jeff, feeling like Jeff's an awesome guy and could do so much better, and being all "Dude, you gotta get out more, look, lemme set you up for the Spring Formal" and hoping Jeff will see the light. (I also am so curious as to how that dance went — did Jeff had a terrible time but pretended like it was all great… is there's some girl out there who was weirded out by the whole experience?)
-I am actually super interested in what happens to Sammy and James. Does Sammy become an astronaut, or does he fail at that and become a farmer and is actually totally happy being a farmer? (Do he and Maybeth work together? He could do the farming, she could do the people work…) What kind of doctor is James, does he do research, I can see him doing clinical studies about how people react to this or that (although I honestly can't see in a lab at all). Actually I sort of see him being an Oliver Sacks or Atul Gawande type — not so much a really awesome doctor (though presumably he's a *good* doctor, I feel like the James of this and Sons wouldn't be a doctor if he wasn't able to be a good one) as one who is really great at writing about and making connections about medicine. What happens to Toby? Of all of them (except maybe James for the reason given above), I think he has the best shot at being someone legit famous, mostly because apparently I trust James' sense of that. I don't know, though — do you trust James' sense? Dicey and Maybeth have their own trajectories, of course; and Sammy and Mina and Jeff all could be solid or could be superstars (and the failure-narrative of this book underlines that solid is much more likely than superstar). Of course the whole point that the book is making is that being a superstar is not what any of these people is aspiring to, but it's fun to think about.
The theme of this book is pretty obvious (and is targeted by the title — I think all the titles in this cycle point directly to the major theme of the book except for Runner, and maybe that one does too, but it's too subtle for me to even figure out what the theme is). It's about failure, how we fail, how we approach failure, what we do with it, how we recover from it. Everyone in this book is subject to a mode of failure, some more than others — Dicey most prominently, but also Sammy (tennis), Maybeth (Phil, history (until the end)), Gram (pneumonia), Mina (Dexter), Jeff (Dicey). Which is why it's such a depressing book and everyone's least favorite — who likes to read about failure? And yet — this time around, I found it also to be an affirming and tender book, mostly because I was concentrating much harder on the non-Dicey sections, and because half of the failures are saved by the relationships between the people. (Sammy's tennis is hypothetically saved by Dicey, Maybeth's history is saved by Dicey, the kids and Dr. Landros save Gram, and Jeff and Dicey save each other.)
(And, of course, the biggest failure comes directly from a bad relationship/person, but we'll get to that.)
We get to find out what everyone's up to (which I'd somehow forgotten). Mina's going to law school come hell or high water or breaking up with Dexter (which in fact it looks like she's going to have to do if she goes to law school, and good riddance I say). James is at Yale and premed. (He's going to make a really interesting doctor!) Jeff's applying to grad schools. Sammy is playing tennis, and is apparently pretty darn good at it.
But let's talk about Dicey, okay, I mostly just want to yell at Dicey. Jeff is so right to be angry at her at the end, for all kinds of reasons, the first and foremost of them being the pretty much total breakdown of communication on her end and taking him totally for granted. But also for, hmm, how should I put this, the conflation of boat-building and boat-business, which are two different kinds of things, and I feel like someone should have set Dicey straight on this. (That being said, when I was Dicey's age I didn't know about insurance and contracts and such, and it's sort of surprising to me that Mina and Jeff do. On the other hand I was pretty clear that I didn't know enough to start my own business and I'd have to learn about all of that if I did, so I guess there's that.)
In this book there's virtually no community for Dicey (the people she does boat-building with aren't… people the Tillermans (or I) would really want to be a community with), which distinguishes it (and not in a good way) from the rest of the series, where building this community (or leaning on an already-built one, as in Stranger and Sons) was a main theme. And, huh, this looks a lot to me like a resurgence of the boat theme. Boats divide off people, and here Dicey lets the boat-building divide her from everything else that really matters, the people in her life — until the very end, when it becomes a way for her and Jeff to connect (as it was in Solitary).
…except for Cisco, who is a sort of pseudo-community for Dicey in this book (very pseudo, given what happens at the end). Now that I actually know he's Dicey's biodad, it seems SO OBVIOUS from every single thing he says — all the little microreactions, like when they talk about marriage (and that he hasn't actually been married), and of course when you know he's Dicey's father it solves the central mystery (in both the Watsonian and Doylist senses) of why this guy is seemingly totally randomly hanging out with Dicey when, let's just say, he is clearly not the type to be hanging around a kid like her who doesn't have anything to offer him. And yet I never figured out that he was Dicey's father, I had to have some random person on the net point it out to me (I can't even remember where I found it now).
One of the things that is pretty interesting is that Dicey understands Cisco on a deep intuitive level. She's always thinking things about the way she thinks he thinks about things, or the way their minds work in the same way, or knowing things about him (like that he'd give her back her money if he won). That kind of understanding is almost a familial understanding (not quite, because Mina and Tamer share that kind of understanding as well) — again, well, I'm shocked I never even had a hint of their relationship before I was told.
And he takes something that wasn't a success for Dicey, but which she could have pulled out to a certain extent, and turns it into an even bigger failure. Way to go, Verricker. Even more than that, as
mildred_of_midgard pointed out, way to steal from your own daughter.Various random thoughts (/speculation
-So, you know, Mina sends in a videotape of herself dancing waaaay back when (I mean, ten years prior it must have been!) in Stranger, so it's a little disingenuous that it's the solution to Sammy's tennis camp and nobody even thought of it until then, it feels like to me, But, you know, if that's my biggest problem with these books, that's… pretty good.
-Man, I really want the Maybeth book. Sammy and James got a book! (Okay, they had to share, but still.) Jeff and Mina got books! Where is Maybeth's book?? Also, I thought it was interesting that Gram wills the farm to her. It's interesting because the farm used to be a curse — it was to Grandfather Tillerman, and also to Gram, I think, for a number of years — although it wouldn't have been to Bullet, if he had lived, and it's not to the grandchildren, now that it's being taken care of. And it is clearly a blessing to Maybeth. If she married, presumably she wouldn't need the farm… Does she marry? Or does she stay at the farm as a beloved unmarried matriarch at the center of a ton of siblings and friends and nieces and nephews (and chickens?? hee) who are always making life interesting? Or is there some other path for her life that Gram didn't see? I do think the narrative cautions us against taking Gram's word for it — after all, she wanted to marry Maybeth to Mr. Lingerle, whom (especially given the development of him moving to marry someone else HIS OWN AGE) I kind of imagine as thinking, "uh, she's a very sweet LITTLE KID but no thank you!" And THEN she wanted to marry JEFF to Maybeth (which, um, WHAT).
-I gotta wonder what Jeff and Jeff's roommate thought of the events of this book, like, Jeff's got this girlfriend he's Really Sooper Serious about who… never calls him… or seems to want to hang out with him at all… I just imagine Roger worrying about Jeff, feeling like Jeff's an awesome guy and could do so much better, and being all "Dude, you gotta get out more, look, lemme set you up for the Spring Formal" and hoping Jeff will see the light. (I also am so curious as to how that dance went — did Jeff had a terrible time but pretended like it was all great… is there's some girl out there who was weirded out by the whole experience?)
-I am actually super interested in what happens to Sammy and James. Does Sammy become an astronaut, or does he fail at that and become a farmer and is actually totally happy being a farmer? (Do he and Maybeth work together? He could do the farming, she could do the people work…) What kind of doctor is James, does he do research, I can see him doing clinical studies about how people react to this or that (although I honestly can't see in a lab at all). Actually I sort of see him being an Oliver Sacks or Atul Gawande type — not so much a really awesome doctor (though presumably he's a *good* doctor, I feel like the James of this and Sons wouldn't be a doctor if he wasn't able to be a good one) as one who is really great at writing about and making connections about medicine. What happens to Toby? Of all of them (except maybe James for the reason given above), I think he has the best shot at being someone legit famous, mostly because apparently I trust James' sense of that. I don't know, though — do you trust James' sense? Dicey and Maybeth have their own trajectories, of course; and Sammy and Mina and Jeff all could be solid or could be superstars (and the failure-narrative of this book underlines that solid is much more likely than superstar). Of course the whole point that the book is making is that being a superstar is not what any of these people is aspiring to, but it's fun to think about.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-09 06:53 am (UTC)He's her piano teacher. She's fourteen. That's statutory rape. If she were twenty-four and he were thirty-eight, I'd be all on board with it. God knows I proposed to my wife when I was twenty-three and she was thirty-seven (she wasn't my teacher, though), and we're happily and non-creepily married ten years later. But fourteen is WTF.
I like your idea of Maybeth as unmarried matriarch with a farm and chickens. I liked it before, but I like it more now that I'm aware of all this "Maybeth needs to be paired up asap with an older man!" creepiness.
Good on Isaac for moving to Chicago to marry another teacher (I can't believe I'm saying this. The bar is low, but you cleared it! Well done.).
no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 03:18 am (UTC)"But his friend is a woman," Sammy said.
"Is there a law that says men and women can't be friends?" James asked.
"But what about Maybeth?" Sammy asked.
James didn't even bother answering that. Sammy really was just a kid.
So, I mean, I think we are, actually, supposed to take this as an example of something where Sammy is wrong and Gram is more wrong, but still ugh.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-21 09:36 pm (UTC)"I was glad when she began seeing Francis. He was handsome and cheerful. I thought, maybe she’ll be happy, maybe she’ll steady him down."
"[Liza] and that Francis. I liked him, I did.”
She also apparently ships Maybeth/Lingerle and Maybeth/Jeff. And her/John Tillerman, come to think of it.
Gram: maybe just not very good at relationships.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-22 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-22 01:48 pm (UTC)Didn't learn much about proper shipping from her/John Tillerman, clearly...
No, and possibly related is this passage in Dicey's Song:
"I married John, and that wasn’t a mistake. But the way we stayed married, the way we lived, there were lots of mistakes."
Maybe she thinks other people can avoid those mistakes?
People always want to think they can change their abusive SO, but unless they want to change, I'm pretty sure you can't. The most she could have done was protect herself and her children better, and if you ask me, the best way to do that was NOT FREAKING MARRY HIM.
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. ;)