Yes, exactly! The people Dicey interacts with in Seventeen are so unpleasant, it doesn't make for enjoyable reading. I also just realized that a contributing factor for me is that her *work* is so unpleasant, even though it's supposed to be something she likes. Bullet's cross-country scenes are so great in part because he's doing what's right for himself.
(by the way, I maaaay have fairly limited screen time for the next 1.5 to 2 weeks Totally understood. After my initial burst of "Omg, a fellow Tillerman fan!"-driven obsessing, real life has returned, and especially in the last two weeks, which is why this reply is so late. I'll also be traveling most of September, and *won't* have much time for offline reading. But I'm definitely enjoying these convos!
By the way, random cross-reference:
From Dicey's Song, Millie speaking:
"I saw Ab downtown with her three children, the little girl about as pretty as your sister. They were having a race, down the sidewalk, all four of them running as fast as they could. Oh — they were having a good time.”
Dicey got back to her work, trying to see the picture Millie had been looking at: Gram a young woman, like Momma, and her three children. Momma and Bullet and John, all of them in a race. Bullet would have been last because he was smallest. Unless Momma hung back to let him beat her. That was the kind of thing Dicey thought Momma would have done. She wished she could ask Gram if that was the way it happened.
From Runner:
Bullet guessed he didn’t fault Johnny, and he didn’t fault Liza either. His eyes roamed around, watching the stars. He guessed his mother didn’t either, although he knew that she, at least, missed them. Not that she said so, not that she tried to stop Liza from going— but he could read her. And, if he remembered, he remembered how different things used to be, how different she was . . . He could remember seeing her run, her skirt tangling at her legs and himself running to try to catch her and her laughter when she pretended he had— but that was all gone, long gone, faded away, closed off. As far as he could tell, his mother didn’t miss it.
And then, continuing the scene where Millie is remembering the race in Song:
“It surely is a blessing for Ab that you turned up,” Millie said. “I guess no matter what your Momma did, Ab is happy to have you.”
“You think so?” Dicey asked.
“I guess she’s more like her old self these days,” Millie said. Dicey believed what Millie was saying because however stupid Millie might be at reading and numbers she had known Gram all of her life.
So you've got two characters remembering Ab racing with her kids*, two characters wishing she would talk about it, two characters noticing that she'd changed, and Millie observing that Ab has come full circle. Which fits with the theme we've observed of the later generation making right on the earlier generations' mistakes. The helping, healing theme. Dicey and her siblings are Gram's second chance.
* With a common element of pretending for Bullet's sake, although I *think* in Bullet it's his mother, not his sister, he's remembering holding back. The pronouns are a bit ambiguous to me there. Is that how you read it?
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Date: 2017-08-26 03:44 pm (UTC)(by the way, I maaaay have fairly limited screen time for the next 1.5 to 2 weeks
Totally understood. After my initial burst of "Omg, a fellow Tillerman fan!"-driven obsessing, real life has returned, and especially in the last two weeks, which is why this reply is so late. I'll also be traveling most of September, and *won't* have much time for offline reading. But I'm definitely enjoying these convos!
By the way, random cross-reference:
From Dicey's Song, Millie speaking:
"I saw Ab downtown with her three children, the little girl about as pretty as your sister. They were having a race, down the sidewalk, all four of them running as fast as they could. Oh — they were having a good time.”
Dicey got back to her work, trying to see the picture Millie had been looking at: Gram a young woman, like Momma, and her three children. Momma and Bullet and John, all of them in a race. Bullet would have been last because he was smallest. Unless Momma hung back to let him beat her. That was the kind of thing Dicey thought Momma would have done. She wished she could ask Gram if that was the way it happened.
From Runner:
Bullet guessed he didn’t fault Johnny, and he didn’t fault Liza either. His eyes roamed around, watching the stars. He guessed his mother didn’t either, although he knew that she, at least, missed them. Not that she said so, not that she tried to stop Liza from going— but he could read her. And, if he remembered, he remembered how different things used to be, how different she was . . . He could remember seeing her run, her skirt tangling at her legs and himself running to try to catch her and her laughter when she pretended he had— but that was all gone, long gone, faded away, closed off. As far as he could tell, his mother didn’t miss it.
And then, continuing the scene where Millie is remembering the race in Song:
“It surely is a blessing for Ab that you turned up,” Millie said. “I guess no matter what your Momma did, Ab is happy to have you.”
“You think so?” Dicey asked.
“I guess she’s more like her old self these days,” Millie said. Dicey believed what Millie was saying because however stupid Millie might be at reading and numbers she had known Gram all of her life.
So you've got two characters remembering Ab racing with her kids*, two characters wishing she would talk about it, two characters noticing that she'd changed, and Millie observing that Ab has come full circle. Which fits with the theme we've observed of the later generation making right on the earlier generations' mistakes. The helping, healing theme. Dicey and her siblings are Gram's second chance.
* With a common element of pretending for Bullet's sake, although I *think* in Bullet it's his mother, not his sister, he's remembering holding back. The pronouns are a bit ambiguous to me there. Is that how you read it?