Hi! So, I’ve literally just finished reading this novel, and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. The art, the style, the storytelling and pacing, it was all top notch. The only slight hitch for me is the ending—it’s very ambiguous and jarring—which, for the record, I think it’s supposed to be. After thinking about it for a long while, the conclusion I come to is we have a “The Yellow Wallpaper” situation here where the protagonist, so bored with her mundane life and not really ever fitting in, has an extremely overactive imagination, to the point where her fantasies literally start to spill I to her day to day life. I believe this is why color being used specifically for the fantasy scenes, and only being used in the real world for fantastical imagery, is so important. I believe that quite literally, Abby heard Crystal’s story about seeing her mother down by the lake and her imagination just took it from there. We see that the husband can be a bit absent minded—he calls Crystal Abby at one point in the book, so I believe he could have mixed up the reasons he gave for his wife disappearing, considering she actually had left to take a break from the family. I really believe that Crystal was just dealing with her grief with her own overactive imagination, which caught fire to Abby, who’s imagination started to craft a narrative about her husband that was a coverup for her own frustration in her life. As for the very end, I think the last image tells us everything we need to know. Abby has quite literally been killed by her fantasies. In reality, she was stabbed in the stomach by Sheila, but this only happened as a result of her fantasies. I believe Sheila is hugging Abby in the last image because she feels guilty for what she has done, and I believe Crystal cries out mom because she genuinely had grown some affection for Abby, and is alarmed to see her hurt. But that’s just my own theory! What do you guys think?
by Lizkingbusiness1
2 Comments
I was thinking something similar! My interpretation that there is an actual ghost/spirit/etc, who finds its way inside Abby precisely because she is so fantasy-driven and is desperate to be this brave, selfless figure (ie the knight).
I think there is a key point in the scene where Abby has the Mandela Effect mis-remembering that in Sir Gallypeg the hero, a knight, dies as soon as “he leaves the cave”. It’s a gothic romance, the house has to burn at the end to symbolize finding freedom from the past… or a small town and unhappy marriage.