46 pages • 1 hour read
A Family Matter
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Important Quotes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, antigay bias, and emotional abuse.
“There are things he will have to do now. Things he will have to say. Admit.”
(Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 5)
Heron struggles with how to react after being told a few hours ago that he has a terminal illness. His words convey his fear of anything that disrupts the normal flow of his life or threatens his control over it. Initially, the passage alludes to a concern about breaking bad news to his family, but the word “admit” appears to refer to other matters, specifically things of which he is guilty. It foreshadows the fact that he has spent 20 years not telling his daughter anything about her mother or his role in Dawn losing custody.
“She knew she should have mentioned them, the husband and child waiting inside, her real life. It wasn’t a lie, Dawn told herself, just a break, a few hours of being a different kind of young again.”
(Part 2, Chapter 3, Page 18)
Dawn reflects on the fact that after she and Hazel part at her house following their first meeting, she omits to mention that she is married with a daughter. This is one example of many in the novel where people are careful about what they say for a variety of reasons, not lying but not telling the full truth either. It is clear from this the impression that Hazel has made on her at their first meeting. The youthfulness Dawn feels is implicitly a sense of romance and flirtation, but this is something she struggles to articulate, given how deeply she has repressed her identity.
