Olivetti

“Texting wasn’t something I did. My phone lived at the bottom of my backpack, and never really had a reason to come out. Phones were for people who had friends. Or in case of emergencies. I didn’t have either of those.”

Ernest’s youthful, self-deprecating tone shines through in this moment of interior monologue, providing a direct contrast to Olivetti’s self-assured, mature ruminations. As the only two viewpoints in the novel, these first-person perspectives work together to tell the story from different angles. Both characters are struggling with specific challenges that tie into the broader conflict of finding the missing Beatrice. Ernest, as his bitterly resigned tone suggests, is deeply aware of his social awkwardness and isolation.

“Above her head said Missing. But I wasn’t sure that was exactly the right word anymore.”

This line from Ernest offers a subtle irony in light of his passion for dictionaries, exemplifying the motif of wordplay. Ernest loves words and uses precise vocabulary to convey specific shades of meaning, and his contemplations about the “missing” signs for his mother show his pedantic attention to detail, even when he considers topics that are deeply painful to him. In these early chapters, Ernest is depicted as a stranger in his own family, with ongoing tension between him and the others exacerbated by his siblings’ occasional unsupportive comments. As the story unfolds, the distance between Ernest and the other Brindles widens, and he becomes the only one to truly understand his mother’s predicament.

“I don’t want to talk to you either.”

This blunt statement comes in the form of Ernest’s guilt-ridden recollections of his last conversation with his mother before her disappearance. One week ago, he said this to Beatrice after a failed therapist appointment. Now that Beatrice is gone, he regrets his harsh tone and the full week of silence that he inflicted upon his mother. The slow realization that her disappearance may have been his fault contributes to Ernest’s internal anguish, and his guilt grows to become a significant hurdle that complicates The Journey From Grief to Acceptance.

“This was my chance to do more. To be more than just a pawn.

To be someone worth keeping.

My keys took off, loud and clacking and completely against the rules, and my ink smacked the page below Ernest’s words.”

Olivetti’s comment touches upon the motif of wordplay with the double meaning inherent in the word “pawn”: He is currently in a pawn shop and has literally been “pawned” by Beatrice. However, his status as a means to others’ ends also renders him a “pawn” in a metaphorical sense, as just like a pawn in chess, he has limited movement and remains subject to the decisions of the novel’s major players and their determination of his worth. Yet despite these limitations, Olivetti shows that he possesses great courage when he breaks the rule against communicating with humans.

“Nearing Valley View Apartments, I slowed to a normal pace. Exercise wasn’t really my thing, so between that and freshly perpetuated crime, my breathing was at Darth Vader level.”

Both the trim word count and fast-moving plot of middle grade novels prompt writers to load passages with a barrage of key details. Here, in two short sentences, the author mentions Ernest’s home in San Francisco, indicates that Ernest is not very athletic, and makes an allusion to Star Wars that establishes Ernest’s familiarity with pop culture. (Darth Vader, the classic antagonist in the original Star Wars trilogy, is well known for his mechanized, heavy breathing.)

“Shop Girl pulled a brooch from her bursting front pouch. She was like a hoarding kangaroo. ‘Crazy the things people throw away, am I right?’”

By using a simile to compare Quinn to “a hoarding kangaroo,” Ernest shows his propensity for creative thought even as this imagery provides a vivid depiction of Quinn’s physical appearance. In many ways, Quinn is a foil to Ernest; she is bold and outgoing, while he is timid and quiet. Likewise, her enjoyment of “dumpster diving” in order to collect tangible objects contrasts with Ernest’s equally avid interest in collecting abstract words and ideas. Quinn’s comment on “the things people throw away” also foreshadows Ernest’s later choice to leave Olivetti at the pawn shop a second time.

“If only I had known back then. Sometimes, Forever is much shorter than you think.”

Olivetti’s wizened, cynical tone in the early chapters shows his bitterness as he passes harsh judgment on humans and their flaws. As the novel goes on, however, Olivetti undertakes the journey from grief to acceptance and drastically changes his outlook, developing deep love for the Brindles and equally deep concern for their pain. In this passage, he recalls Felix’s marriage proposal to Beatrice and Beatrice’s positive response: “Forever.” With hindsight, Olivetti now sees that Beatrice’s illness threatens to curtail their happiness.

“Every memory means something. […] It simply depends on who is doing the remembering.”

When the library trip turns up no valuable information, Olivetti tries to calm Ernest’s angst by explaining that memories are in the eye of the beholder; the library is a valuable place to Beatrice, who thinks of it as a place that “helps us be brave” (86). Ernest’s memories of the library, by contrast, do not carry such weight. Though Ernest is not ready to embrace the wisdom in Olivetti’s comment, the typewriter’s words nonetheless contribute to the novel’s examination of the healing power of memory.

“Both Brindles froze, stunned by the revelation. Friend and Ernest were not often used in a sentence together.”

Just as Ernest often reacts by reciting strings of alphabetized dictionary words, Olivetti discusses his own experiences in a similar fashion, paying attention to particular words to bring them into focus. Here, Olivetti wittily sums up the reason for Ernest and Felix’s surprise: Ernest has no friends, yet Quinn plainly announces herself as one.

“This was exactly what happened when you started to trust people. Or get close to them.

All they did was hurt you or leave you or let you down. And most of the time, it was all of the above.”

Ernest’s interior monologue demonstrates a rapid-fire cadence whenever he gets upset, and the clarity of his thoughts contrasts sharply with his external silence as he keeps his emotions bottled up inside. In this moment, Quinn’s theft of Olivetti from the Brindle apartment hits Ernest hard because he was just beginning to trust Quinn. Ernest’s complex internal conflict over loving and trusting people stems from his fear of losing his mother, as even when she was pronounced healthy, he remained “stuck” in a state of worry and anxiety. Thus, Quinn’s actions prove to Ernest that he is right not to make himself vulnerable to the threat of loss. However, his feelings change as he progresses on the journey from grief to acceptance.

“You really think I’d bring him back here after everything that’s happened? Come on, you know me better than that.”

Quinn’s snappy, brash dialogue conveys her bold, assertive nature and emphasizes her status as a foil to Ernest. Her statement that Ernest “knows” her is also somewhat ironic, given that the two only recently met for the first time. Her familiar tone and determination to help Ernest despite his hesitancy also prove her to be a friend worth keeping.

“Strength isn’t about what you can do. […] It’s about what you can endure.”

Because Beatrice disappears so early in the narrative and does not enter the real-time action again until the end of the story, she is indirectly characterized through Olivetti’s memories and the family’s discussions about her. Snippets of her writing and dialogue also populate Olivetti’s memories, further conveying her key traits. This passage features Beatrice’s comments on the nature of inner strength, revealing that she sees Olivetti’s stability as a rock that helps her endure as well. Her words foreshadow her diagnosis and the inner strength that the family must demonstrate in order to keep moving forward.

“The rest of the horrible puzzle pieced together, all sharp corners and jagged edges. There was never any new therapist for me to see. The appointment was with Mom’s doctor, on the day she left.

That was how she wanted us to find out?”

After Quinn and Ernest deduce the location of Dr. Branson’s office, the narrative takes a sweeping turn as Ernest discovers the truth about his mother’s diagnosis. His turbulent thoughts finally reveal the truth of his mother’s years-long fight against cancer, which the narrative has avoided mentioning until this moment. The fact that Beatrice set up an appointment for Felix and Ernest to attend—on the false premise that Dr. Branson was a potential therapist—indicates her own level of shock and dismay; she cannot bring herself to tell her family the truth herself, and she hopes that they will come with her to hear the doctor tell them the truth of the situation. This issues further develops the theme of The Importance of Communicating With Family Members.

“No more nights on the roof, sharing stories with me.

The Brindles were done with make-believe.

And yet—they still pretended every day.”

With the bitter contradictions in this passage, Olivetti reveals the harsh details of daily life with the Brindles as they all struggled during Beatrice’s first bout with cancer. Although no one wanted to try to play-act Narnia anymore or devote time to storytelling, Olivetti astutely observes that each member of the family “pretended” in one way or another so that they could soldier on with work or school. In short, the family tried to weather their fears of losing Beatrice by turning away from the truth and hiding it from themselves. Olivetti’s description of this past history implies that because the cancer has come back, the family must react differently if they are to progress on the journey from grief to acceptance.

“They were acting like a bunch of idioms.”

When Adalynn and Ezra’s quibble about a grammar point develops into a heated argument and sparks Felix’s loud reprimands, Ernest cannot help but use a bit of wordplay in his private thoughts to sum up his assessment of their behavior. Ernest knows very well that idioms are “phrases that don’t follow any kind of logic” (162), and that is how he views his shouting siblings in the moment. He uses their emotional display to rationalize his decision not to tell them what he knows about his mother’s cancer, but when he feels grief after keeping this secret, his struggles will emphasize the importance of communicating with family members.

“Callum was no artist. He was a monster.

A stealer of steel.

And I was his next target.”

In this dramatic passage just prior to his dismantlement, Olivetti shows his deft use of wordplay with the pun “stealer of steel.” Even in this drastic situation, he proves his cleverness and wit, and his use of a simple metaphor (“monster”) also vividly conveys the danger he faces in Callum’s hands.

“All my memories unwound like the unhinged ribbon of ink within me as Callum took apart my pieces. One by one. The stories I held—the words, the moments—emptied out of me, slowly leaking from the cracks in my steel.

Liquid heartbeats, lying on the table.”

Olivetti uses an effective simile (“like the unhinged ribbon of ink”) and a metaphor (“liquid heartbeats”) to create a visceral sense that his life and his very identity are fading away as Callum dismantles him. While taking apart a machine would normally be an emotionless process, Olivetti’s sentience and his descriptions of his own anguish imbue the scene with intensity and deeply personal emotions. As he compares his stored words and memories of the Brindles to heartbeats, it is clear that Olivetti feels deeply connected to the family, and the loss of his memories constitutes an event as grave as the stopping of his metaphorical heart. Even before he loses consciousness, Olivetti remains convinced that typewriters are nothing without their ability to keep memories alive by preserving stories. Within this context, the loss of Olivetti complicates the plot and raises the stakes for Ernest, who must now try to save both his mother and the family typewriter.

“Retribution. Retrieve. Retro. Retroactive. Retrograde. Retrogress.”

Ernest often reacts to highly charged moments by reciting a barrage of words that he recalls from the dictionary. His memorized choices always match the goings-on, and in this scene, he reacts to seeing Olivetti in many pieces and can only think about words that pertain to going back in time or acting in relation to something that has already happened.

“There was nothing to be said but what his face had to say, and his eyes were encyclopedic.

Everything I ever needed to know was right there.

I wasn’t alone. I never had been.”

In a moment that echoes back to the start of the novel, when Ernest found it impossible to look his father in the eye, Ernest learns how incorrect he was to assume that he was more saddened or isolated than the others in his family. Now, as he regards his father with a greater sense of empathy and understanding, he employs a hyperbolic metaphor comparing his father’s eyes to the endless volumes of information in an encyclopedia. This split-second observation shows Ernest’s new understanding that he can always rely on his father’s wisdom and strength.

“It is human instinct to return somewhere familiar when things go wrong. A location that feels safe.”

Olivetti’s stored words contain Beatrice’s stories and descriptions of her most important memories, but they are erased when Callum dismantles him, and with the loss of this treasure trove of information, Olivetti feels a fresh sense of internal conflict and guilt. However, Olivetti’s own memories are safe, and his devotion to Beatrice and determination to help find her have only been strengthened by his ordeal. This passage also contains an element of irony, given that the nonhuman Olivetti gives the Brindles and Quinn new insights about the very human need to seek safety and familiarity. Because he felt a similar pull in the pawn shop and in the art studio, the narrative suggests that his emotions are closer to those of humans than he might believe. The idea of returning to a special, favorite location also reinforces the story’s focus on the healing power of memory.

“Panic crept up the back of my neck, seeping into my skin.

What if we were wrong? What if we came all this way and she wasn’t here?”

By personifying panic itself as something capable of creeping, the author vividly conveys Ernest’s worry and fear that the 12-hour car trip to Cannon Beach might be a mistake. However, Ernest’s reaction to his fear in this moment proves that he has matured since his discovery of Beatrice’s disappearance. Instead of running away or lashing out, Ernest tries to think empathically and realizes that his mother might need to be closer to Haystack Rock. He finds her by calming his thoughts and focusing on her needs, thereby taking an important step in his coming-of-age process.

“She looked weightless, as if the wind was helping her float and she was made of sunlit feathers. There were natural paths worn into the side of the rock, and she maneuvered every groove with ease.

Like she knew what was coming next. Like it wasn’t her first time doing this.

‘She can do it,’ I whispered, because in that moment I was sure she could do anything.”

The symbolism of this scene reframes a literal path in the rock as a metaphorical path through difficult life challenges, and in this context, Beatrice’s graceful movements give her son new hope. As Ernest watches his mother carefully descend from her precarious position on a ledge of Haystack Rock, he understands that she has handled difficulties before and will do so again. While the novel refrains from providing details, this development suggests that she will return to undergo treatment and fight her cancer. The novel therefore strikes a fine balance between providing the hopeful conclusion central to middle grade fiction and keeping this part of the plot realistic and uncontrived.

“These aren’t just my memories. They’re ours. These words. These moments—they belong to us.”

The healing power of memory is evident as Beatrice generously reminds her husband and children that she wrote her Tapestries for all of them. These memories, especially that of Haystack Rock, are consequential not only in finding the missing Beatrice but also in helping Ernest heal after the traumatic, fearful experience of his mother’s fight to survive.