I finished The Ash Family recently. I enjoyed it, but had some questions.
SPOILERS!!
Factual questions:
-What happened to the owl? Obviously we have an unreliable narrator at certain points here, and we aren't meant to believe that the owl's wing magically healed. But what I want to know is, is it supposed to be clear what really happened? Did he have a second owl he swapped in? Did he just toss it out the window and act like it was healed? On the one hand, it seems reasonable given the spiritual experiences they had that she could be overcome with belief and interpret something in a fanciful way. But this was so specific in timing and setup, it doesn't seem likely that she happened to have some kind of emotional moment and just kind of made that up… It seems like we can at least believe that there was an owl, and that on its last day with them, it disappeared, and he likely did at least put some of the tincture on it. Dice had a lesson planned, this really seemed like an intentional setup to convince some of the more naive girls that he is capable of miracles, so the idea that he just relied on her to have a moment of emotion seems far-fetched.
-Were the police coming? I don't get what motivation Queen would have to lie about any of it, especially to lie only to Berie, unless for some reason she thought it would motivate her to run and hide. Which I guess it did seem like Queen might have thought– she really miscalculated Berie's reaction to the information, so maybe she was hoping it would have a different effect. When the narrator says "I didn't even notice until now that there were no helicopters or sirens" it seems to be a revelation of sorts, and the only way I can make sense of it is if the police didn't come at all, but I suppose the other option is that she could have been unconscious for a long time or just not attentive to her surroundings until she was further away than she realized. I know when I read it I also briefly had the idea that her revelation may have been more about the place she found herself than about events that may or may not have happened.
-Do we have an meaningful negative judgements towards the mother? Honestly my takeaway on this point was that she was no more or less perfect than any mother, and every parent makes mistakes. At the start of the book I was annoyed and thought I wouldn't be able to enjoy it because Berie just drove me up a wall– I said to myself "If you expect me to feel sorry for her after all these wildly irresponsible and unreasonable choices she's making, I will refuse." But it kind of had the same late-breaking arc to me that I felt in Things Fall Apart– I know, hugely different, barely anything to compare here, but in both cases I started the book thinking it was asking me to understand and support the actions of the protagonists, and I was uncomfortable with it because I simply refused to do so, but as the story went on you realize they aren't asking for that, they're only asking for you to listen and then understand how much our perspective influences what we take away from a story and how context influences how we act. I don't think her Mom was a well socialized, wonderful outgoing person who held the author's hand and walked her through the world, but I don't think we have any indication that she rose to a level of being overbearing, abusive, neglectful, or anything beyond the ordinary high and low points that affect any mother-daughter relationship.
-Did they drug her at any point? She feels lightheaded and confused at several points, and there is always kind of an explanation– she's inhaling gas fumes and found out her mom died, or she's cold and feverish, etc… but I kept wondering if she had been dosed at various points in the books. It never seemed explicit and I concluded it did not happen, but wondered if you had the question at the very least.
Presentation Question
-How did you feel about the handling of Isaac's story post-visit? Obviously a big part of the fun and tension of the book was the way they kept us guessing about whether Isaac and Berie's Mom were killed. I really didn't think there was any chance Isaac made it home alive based on the way the author kind of foretold her mistakes. Like "I should have known the way he said it something was off" is a paraphrasal of something she said. But… at the end of the day, they just took him home? Did they take his money forcefull/at gunpoint maybe? And the way Bay said "oh, he's home alright"– I guess maybe that was more a knock on him not belonging in the real world, and he's more at home in the fake world? Obviously, I took that to mean like, home in the dirt or something at the time, and the glib way they talk about Isaac donating the money to her cause made it really seem like they had harmed him.
I guess part of me feels like there was some intentionally misleading writing here, which feels unfair given that we have a first person narrator… like, you can't word something in a way to set your readers up for misdirection if the character in the story wouldn't think those thoughts. It feels like an intrusion by the author into the story. But at the same time, I think it's even more likely that when I felt this way, I just misunderstood the intent behind the character's words. So what do you think?
Additional notes:
Oh my goodness Pear. I love you, poor dear Pear. I'm glad you redeemed yourself for whatever evil you helped bring about over the years and I'm so sorry you paid so dearly for it, at the hands of someone you trusted. I want to bake you cookies and tell you it's going to be okay, but you're ash in the bottom of the bone room now, along with Queen whom you tried so hard to help.
Did anyone who read the book see the author made a playlist for it on Spotify? I really enjoyed hearing some of the shape singers, sacred harp singers, etc, but man, some of the music choices are jarring as hell. I wanted to go back and compare– there are some songs that are modern and only seem connected in the name of the band or song, but I wondered if some of the snippets on the radio matched with any of the songs on the playlists. When we are given song lyrics from the radio I expected I might know the songs, but I wasn't able to get any. If I had more time I might have put them into Google to see what songs they were, but I had a lot to read on the last day it was due back. Anyway, it crossed my mind that she might have put some of the songs she referenced in the book fromk the radio in her playlist. I don't know the rules on linking outside webpages here but you can find it by putting the author's name into Spotify and searching for playlists she's made.
Thanks for sharing any thoughts you have! Even if they're small, aren't related to anything I asked, or you don't think they'll be well received or shared, I'm wanting to soak in all of your ideas about the book for a bit longer.
by RemindMeToTouchGrass