The Beach Club

“‘Yes, sir,’ Mack said. A voice was saying ‘Home, home.’ Mack could hear it as plain as day. He extended his hand. ‘I’m Mack Petersen.’

Bill frowned. ‘Mack Petersen wasn’t who I was picking up.’”

The moment when Mack and Bill meet sets up both Mack’s desire for a place to call home and his anxiety that he is misplaced, as Bill unwittingly contradicts the voice affirming that Mack is where he is supposed to be. It also explains Vance Robbin’s underlying anger toward Mack: Bill was supposed to pick up and interview Vance, but Mack gets the job, in part because Bill picks up the wrong person.

“Mack lost his parents in a car accident and Maribel tried to believe this was the same thing as her not having a father, but in fact, it was vastly different. When Maribel thought of her father, there was no one to picture. She was left with an empty spot inside, a part of her missing. A hole.”

Maribel sympathizes with Mack regarding the loss of his parents but can’t fully understand it because their losses aren’t equivalent. Mack had parents who loved him and whom he lost in young adulthood, whereas Maribel has never had a father figure to look toward. One of the underlying sources of tension in her relationship with Mack rests is her belief that Mack can assuage his grief with her, coupled with the fact that she cannot fill her own “empty spot” with Mack. The passage thus develops the theme of The Long-Term Impact of Emotional Voids.

“Vance was a black sheep, an evil twin, a kid who got off the boat thirty seconds too late.”

In a succinct manner, Vance explains how he sees himself as an outsider in the world of The Beach Club. He notes that he is the “black sheep,” an