Yesterday as I was finishing our next discussion book, my impatient dog was
intent on reminding me of her existence. You know the feeling, just one more page, just
just one more and then dog park time, promise! With one chapter left, I put on shoes
and jacket and off we went. On returning home I hesitated reading that last chapter,
I had grown to know these characters and I wasn't ready to let them go; but, my curiosity of
the ending was too great. I finished the book, said goodbye to these characters and sat
with my thoughts.
How did this book affect you? Did you agree with the ending?
Come join the discussion this Thursday from 10 - 11:30 AM.
Plot, structure and
characters are important; and, for me I am particularly drawn to the use of language.
Let me share some of my favorite passages from "Little Fires Everywhere."
- "Later, when Moody saw the finished photos, he thought at first that Pearl looked like a delicate fossil, something caught for millennia in the skeleton belly of a prehistoric beast." (Pearl was assembling her bed frame.)
- "Mr. Richardson, in his jacket and tie, had left long before, but he loomed in the background, solid and impressive, and important, like a mountain range on the horizon."
- At the Richardson house were overstuffed sofas so deep you could sink into them as if into a bubble bath."
- "At dinner, Pearl talked about the Richardsons as if they were a TV show she was fanatical about."
- "Instead she asked the question that ran below all the other questions like a deep underground river." (Pearl asks her mother "Was I wanted?")
- "Each room had been painted a different color --the kitchen a sunny yellow, the living room a deep cantaloupe, the bedroom a warm peach---the overall effect was of stepping into a box of sunlight, even on a cloudy day."
- "She had a plan, from girlhood on, and had followed it scrupulously: high school, college, boyfriend, marriage, job, mortgage, children. A sedan with air bags and automatic seat belts. A lawn mower and a snowblower. A matching washer and dryer. She had, in short, done everything right and she had built a good life, the kind of life she wanted, the kind of life everyone wanted." (This is Mrs. Richardson talking here....)
- "Now, almost two decades later, well settled in their careers and their family and their lives, as he filled up his BMW with premium gas, or cleaned his golf clubs, or signed a permission form for his children to go skiing, those college days seemed fuzzy and distant as old Polaroids."
- "The atmosphere in every hallway was like that of a surprise party, with no host in evidence but everyone, somehow, as the surprised and delighted guest." (Oh the havoc 3 teenagers can cause with 127 door locks, with only a toothpick!)
- "They eat. They sleep. They poop. They cry. I'd rather have a dog." (Moody's assessment of having a baby in your life.)
- "To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future your longed for all existed at once."
- "It felt like a promise, a present someone had shown her, then shoved away on a high shelf for later." (Lexie's fantasies about having the baby.....)
- "She curled up on the bed, feeling small and pink and tender as a cocktail shrimp, and let her fantasy go, like a balloon soaring into the sky until it burst." (Lexie becomes realistic about having a baby....)
- "The mug was comfortingly solid, like a warm, strong shoulder."
- "He felt as if he'd dived into a deep, clear lake and discovered it was a shallow, knee-deep pond." (How Moody felt when he found out about his brother Trip and Pearl.)
- "She had seen Pearl watching Trip for months, like a mouse watching a cat, longing to be eaten."