The Bright Years

“His mother’s navy pumps cross the yellow linoleum. He watches her apron swoosh and braces for his father to follow with his grass-stained socks and loudness. But the only sounds are his mother’s steps, cabinets opening and closing, and June Cleaver asking Wally where he’s going.”

This scene, in which a young Ryan anticipates the abuse and violence of his father, demonstrates how he tries to protect himself from the trauma, an early establishment of one of the novel’s main themes, Breaking Cycles of Generational Trauma. He stays under the table, drawing on its underside, only seeing the feet of his mother. Damoff uses sensory imagery from Ryan’s perspective under the table, including colors like “navy” and “yellow” and sounds of his mother’s “apron swoosh,” to highlight Ryan’s extreme attunement to the scene, underscoring his increased awareness of the underlying tension.

“We’re stacking emotion on emotion like a block tower nearing collapse.”

Lillian’s description of the early days of her relationship with Ryan as one in which they continue to pile their emotions together foreshadows their trajectory: The simile compares these emotions to blocks building a tower, but Damoff subverts the imagery of a tower by highlighting its precariousness rather than its strength. The emotions that they pile on, both love and sadness, add both weight and instability to their relationship, threatening it.