they're all going to laugh at you

It's about 6 a.m., and I shouldn't be awake yet. But I am, so I thought I would make the best of it. I couldn't concentrate enough to read, but after a little coffee jolt I thought I could at least transcribe my initial thoughts on "Solipsist." I actually read this book several years ago -- possibly as far back as high school. It's an intriguing book, supposedly fiction but so deep inside the character's head you wonder if Rollins isn't writing about himself. It reminds me of the feeling I got reading "Notes from Underground" -- a sort of diary of a madman who may or may not actually be mad. This character is a true solipsist, which the back of the book so generously defines for us as one who believes the only verifiable reality is the self. 

We find out the character's name is Robert Fulton. He's basically a recluse inside his own mind. He does venture out but interacts with strangers only to his chagrin. His anxiety about potential conversations causes him to practice smiles and casual phrases in a mirror to prepare for the outside world. Apparently he's spent a good amount of time there -- everywhere he goes people he doesn't know call him by name. So he may have Rollins-like fame, or maybe he was a boxer. The only clue so far is that he spent "too many nights knocking my guts out for the approval of strangers" (34). Either way, he has developed a "me versus them" attitude that seems to represent fear cloaked in hatred. Yet he participates in a small percentage of the niceties he detests. When he's unable to simply look at the ground and avoid eye contact, human interaction makes him feel like he's drowning. We can all relate to some extent, at least to the feeling of not being able to escape an awkward situation. When it's finally over, he says the feeling of relief was "like being let up for air after having your head held underwater" (32).

Basically, the whole book is one long awesome quotation, but I've managed to pick out a few that really stuck out to me in the first 34 pages.

"If I was a woman these days, I'd be killing motherfuckers. My handgun would never be cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. I would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because I would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right." (9)

"I tried to love and failed. I tried to hate and got bored." (9)

"I know you think about sex all the time. I know you have killed people in your mind. I know that you say a lot of things to yourself that you would never say out loud. I know you say a lot of things you don't mean for fear of what the other chicken shit lying motherfuckers will say about you." (10)

"Maybe it's time to rebel! Rebellion? You mean that neurotic posturing you do before apathy sets in and The Simpsons comes on?" (10)

"When you allow yourself to trust someone, you never really do all the way, so why lie?" (20)

"I turn around and he comes up and tells me that I kicked him in the head when he was nineteen. I struggle for something to say but the only word that comes out is, 'Good.'"

Pause for feeling of satisfaction.

"He says he has a son now and he is also a fan of mine. I recover in time to attempt to use humor. 'Well, bring him over sometime and I'll kick him too.' I laugh, he laughs. I do the smile that I practiced in the mirror and the wave that I saw in a movie and keep walking. That's a wrap. Good scene" (33).

• acrimony = harsh or bitter disposition
• misanthropy = hatred, dislike or distrust of humankind

feed your head

Surprise, surprise. I've already finished another book. It's a short book, but it was heart-wrenching nonetheless. "Go Ask Alice" is a young-adult title containing the diary of an anonymous teenage girl who finds herself swallowed up into the world of drugs and sex, causing her to run away from home, and eventually leading to her death.

See the title's inspiration here.

A girl I work with said she read this book in "like seventh grade." I'm not sure I would've been ready to hear about acid trips and rape when I was that young, but the diarist is just about 15 when she begins using. She starts out as your average teen, talking about a crush on a boy and trying to please her parents. Her first experience with drugs is at a party where the kids decide to play the button game with tainted drinks, and it's all downhill from there.  

It's pretty interesting how quickly the events unfold when seen through a diary. You don't get the normal interaction of a novel, just pure introspection. I admit I read through it pretty quickly though -- it just moved so fast and was so easy to read. I didn't mark a lot of quotes, but a few.

On parents:

Page 25: "Oh, I do hope I won't have to be a nagging mother, but I guess I'll have to be, else I don't see how anything will ever be accomplished."

Page 29: "Parents really are a poor judge of character. Sometimes I wonder how they made it to the age they are."

Various memorable moments:

Page 34-35: She describes her first acid trip. It starts with colorful patterns on the ceiling, quickly moves to her words tasting like colors, and ends up with her seeing in 100 dimensions and possessing the "wisdom of the ages."

Page 46: "I must repent and forgive myself and start over; after all I just turned 15 and I can't stop life and get off."

Page 47: "Valley of the Dolls" flashback: "Finally he broke down and gave me the pills. Actually I don't need the sleep as much as I need the escape. It's a wonderful way to escape. I think I can't stand it and then I just take a pill and wait for sweet nothingness to take over."

Page 109: After returning home from running away: "But I wonder if I will ever feel completely new again. Or will I spend the rest of my life feeling like a walking disease????"

Page 111-12: "Then (the kitten) tried to nurse my ear and the feeling in me was so big I thought I was going to break wide open. It was better than a drug trip,  a thousand times better, a million times, a trillion times. These things are real!"

I'm not sure I know exactly how to feel about this book. It is definitely a testament to the torment a teenage girl can experience. You're listening to what's happening in her head, but she constantly contradicts herself, promising to never do drugs again then giving in to peer pressure the next day. It's two years of on-again, off-again tragedy. Drugs change people, control them, sweep them off their feet. They kill people. 

This book would make a really interesting study, and I'll have to read it more slowly one day. But I am feeling its effects days later, even just with the constant reminder of "White Rabbit" running endlessly through my head. "Go ask Alice, I think she'll know ... "

I leave for NYU SPI in a week. I am taking five books with me, four if I finish "Solipsist" by Henry Rollins this week, which I intend to, since it belongs to my brother and he wants to lend it to my other brother too. The other chosen few are "Anais Nin Reader," "Sex and the City," "The Singer" and "Searching for God Knows What."

book to not crack

What a stark contrast "Rebecca" is to a book I happened to read the first 30 pages of the other day: Nicholas Sparks' "At First Sight." I had forgotten to bring "Rebecca" with me to work, but my Harry Potter-loving coworker had left this behind. Now, I used to work in a bookstore, and I remember seeing this author's works, with their inviting covers and immense popularity. Intrigued, I opened it up and began to read. The horror, the horror! It was the most awful nonsense I ever saw. Every other sentence a cliche, so predictable I probably read those 30 pages in under 10 minutes. It was as easy to read as it is to watch a sitcom, only not nearly as entertaining. Mindless drivel. Like watching an endless string of commercials. No literary value at all, just something he can easily knock out in a few weeks because he's trained himself to write with a formula, just as I trained myself to write a news story. But you can't do that with books and expect to be remembered. Sure, his name will be on bestseller-list records, and they'll continue to make decent movies out of the relatively relatable stories, but no one should ever consider this madness seriously as good writing. It's laughable, and I felt contaminated for even touching the thing.

crack book

Books just don't get much more satisfying than "Rebecca" was. I stayed up last night and finished it, reading quickly and eagerly, like I was eating the crack bread at Jimmy John's. Lots of times when a book is that fascinating, I am left wanting more. But with "Rebecca," everything was just so perfect. And I don't mean perfect in a happily-ever-after kind of way. The ending of the book is actually quite frightening. 

There is a strange presence in the book, beyond the narrator. It's as though you've been told more than the narrator knows, which is quite impossible for a book written in first person. But we are told everything that does happen so thoroughly and in great detail, and even the events that occur beyond the narrator's purview are related to us through her imagination. She's constantly daydreaming, wondering and wandering in her mind. And her scenes are believable -- who better than a sketch artist could bring to life that which she believes to be true? She pictures what's going on over the other side of the telephone line, the predictable conversations people use as gossip, what happens when a guest drives away from Manderley. This faux omniscience is useful to the reader on several levels, but sometimes we are misled just as the narrator is -- hoodwinked by Rebecca, perhaps.

The local authorities are compelled to conduct an inquest into the death of Rebecca de Winter upon finding her body. Of course, it's treated as a formality until her boat man declares there is no way the holes in the bottom of the boat (aptly named "She Comes Back" in French) were made by rocks. He believes them to be manmade -- deliberately. Of course, he's right, but Maxim remains cool and collected, checking his temper at the site of his current wife fainting from heat and nerves in the inquest room. Because she was alone when she died, and it would have been "easy enough for a woman" to alter the boat in the evident ways it was, it's finally declared suicide. I kept thinking that was the only solution during the whole affair, biting my nails through it all, wondering if Maxim would be found out. When I read the word "suicide," it was such a huge relief. But it wasn't over yet.

The book was hard to put down all through the second half, but these last 60 pages or so were intensely compelling. Rebecca's cousin/lover (ew) Jack Favell waits till later in the evening to come to Manderley and use evidence to blackmail Maxim into paying him off. However, Maxim refuses, hiding the anxiety he must've felt. Favell believed Rebecca was in love with him, and he possessed a note from her to him, stating that she wanted to meet him at the boathouse, but she died before that meeting was to have taken place. Favell thinks Maxim murdered her, because who would commit suicide if they had written an urgent note to meet with someone? He produced Ben as a witness to the murder, which indeed he was, but the idiot remained (possibly unknowingly, but likely not) faithful to Maxim. The note had said Rebecca wanted to tell Favell something, and that presence in the book was telling me and, I believe, the narrator that she was going to tell him she was pregnant. Then it was found she had an appointment with a mysterious doctor in London that day -- a women's specialist. So they all go driving out to meet him hours and hours away the next day, only to find he had seen her for quite a different reason, but one he believed could have caused her to end her own life. She had cancer, and just months to live -- months that would be increasingly painful.

So Maxim is off the hook. And I realize I'm being much too summarizing in this post, but I just love how the events unfold in this book. Because that still wasn't the end. On the way home, Maxim calls Frank, who tells him that Mrs. Danvers has left the house in a strange rush. Maxim knows something is up, and it turns out it's exactly what had to happen -- and what I almost thought did happen earlier in the book. When the ship crashed, its distress signals were loud exploding noises, and I rather thought Mr. de Winter had bombed the place. And I can't believe I just used the word rather like that, but the narrator used it so frequently I suppose I've picked it up. Alas, old Danny must've got the idea, too, because she sure ignited the place and ran. And like the narrator, even upon the last lines, I imagined the aftermath: "The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not black at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind of the sea." I pictured all the servants standing outside the great house, watching the fire with tears in their eyes. I thought of the de Winters being so tired from their long overnight drive, spending the night at Frank's bachelor home. 

It's exactly as though a character died at the end of the book. Manderley was a character in "Rebecca" the way New York City was a character in "Sex and the City." "The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows born, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed" (357). Unfortunately, she's wrong. But we can imagine that Manderley lives on as it does in her dream in chapter one, the plants massively overgrown and taking on that wild raucousness like the unharvested rose. The building itself would indeed be "a desolate shell, soulless at last" (3). Upon rereading those first pages, I find the narrator foreshadows the events: "I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. This we have done in full measure, ironic though it seems" (5). 

The happiness of the book is that Mr. and Mrs. de Winter bond over the tragic events. It's morbidly romantic, but there's no better example of two people needing each other so desperately. The strong Maxim even has his moment of weakness, coming to his wife's outstretched arms to be comforted. 

I've definitely added a new favorite to my list. I only wonder if the movie adaptation does it any justice -- I can see that it would be difficult. I also wonder if "Jamaica Inn" will be as brilliant. A book this engaging is exactly why I love reading. I feel so totally invested in the story, almost protective of it -- like it's a secret I'm afraid to share for fear it would be misinterpreted. 

• Pince-nez = style of spectacles popular in the 19th century, supported not by the ears but the bridge of the nose (and from the French words for "pinch nose")
• Sluice = a drain
• Gaol = jail
• Banting = slang for dieting, apparently referring to the "father of the low-carb diet" in the 1860s

"the sexiest thing is trust," tori says

So I suppose this blog is becoming a weekly occurrence, but only because my day job (of which I have only a week and a half left) is so tiring. Being outside in the sun all day gives me just enough energy to eat and crash in front of the TV for an hour or so before I become incoherent. I am, however, reading a lot during the job's down time, and I've made it to page 304. This book is insanely suspenseful in a strange way. It's not a whodunit, you just really want to know what's going to happen. Today I went to a few book stores and made a point to check out Du Maurier. I found "Jamaica Inn" for $2, and thought it was really quite ironic, because I've been listening to Tori Amos's "The Beekeeper" and a lot of the songs were reminding me of the book, specifically "Jamaica Inn" because the lyrics say: " ... between  Rebeccas, beneath your firmaments, I have worshipped in the Jamaica Inn ... With the gales my little boat was tossed ..." Even unaware Du Maurier had a book by that name, I made the connection because Rebecca died  supposedly  when her small boat sank during a storm. Plus the mood of the CD is perfect for someone like the narrator, living in a big house with gardens near the ocean. 

So I didn't exactly leave off where I thought I did last time. I forgot I had more notes in a different place. So I need to throw in the actual quote from when she wanted to bottle up her memories, which occurred before she and Maxim married: "If only there could be an invention ... that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again" (36). She tells him this without thinking she needs to exhibit any particular etiquette around him; she is comfortable enough to let loose her innocence. She wants to bottle up her time spent driving around the countryside with a mysterious gentleman -- a time she felt special and free.

Unfortunately, I haven't been taking a lot of notes, though, so I have probably missed a lot of the symbolism. But I took note of a card game played between the narrator and Mrs. Van Hopper: "She flipped the Queen of Spades into the pool, and the dark face stared up at me like Jezebel" (35). She felt like Jezebel for sneaking around with Maxim, but she also later feels like Jezebel at Manderley -- she begins to feel like "the other woman" in a way because Rebecca's presence is so strong.

It takes a major event before the narrator loses that childlike awkwardness, feeling like a stranger in her own home. But she makes friends with Frank Crawley, who works as an agent of the estate. He is for a while her go-to man for questions about Rebecca, but she soon finds he acts a little funny about the subject. He tells her it is her mission to help everyone at Manderley forget about the past, to help them leave the painful memories behind. He tells her Rebecca was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, and she begins to wonder if he was perhaps in love with Rebecca, as everyone seemed to be in some way.

At first she is eager to know of the former Mrs. de Winter, picking up tidbits of information on her visits to various friends of the estate. She is shy and dreads making small talk with strangers, but she feels like a teenager who has found the liquor cabinet. It's certainly forbidden, and for good reason. Soon the shadow of Rebecca is too much for her to bear. She is constantly compared and feels as though she's an inferior replacement. Who was the woman who wrote with this pen, wore this raincoat, spoke with these servants? She is wary of conversations that broach the sea or boats, fearing Maxim will smell the metaphorical brandy. 

The climax occurs in two parts. First, the narrator's ball costume is sabotaged by Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper. This, I saw coming. She went on and on about picking out the dress so I knew it would somehow lead to disaster, and the way in with Mrs. Danvers suggested it was so obviously evil (not unlike Cinderella's stepmother) that I couldn't believe the narrator missed it. So the narrator appears looking like Rebecca's ghost, likely scaring Maxim half to death, and upsetting Beatrice, Giles and Frank. She gracefully assumes the role of adoring wife at the party while fearing she has irrevocably damaged her marriage.

The second part of the climax occurred in the opposite manner, and I missed the foreshadowing. Instead of building up to an obvious event, the author made a long-winded tale of a boat crashing near Manderley the day after the party. I almost got bored of it, but I was relieved when the divers discovered Rebecca's boat in the bottom of the bay. Even when the author revealed that a body was inside, I thought perhaps it was one of Rebecca's lovers. (Mrs. Danvers had revealed that she used the boathouse to rendezvous with men.) And even when it was revealed to be the body of Rebecca, I didn't think for a second that she was murdered until Maxim confessed it to his wife. 

The narrator says that in that 24-hour period she became a woman. She grew up and out of her old ways and state of mind. Maxim tells her Rebecca has won, but she refuses to let that happen. She no longer fears Rebecca. She knows now that Maxim's first marriage was a sham. That he didn't love Rebecca. This is what is so important to her, and the reason she stands by him, knowing the heinous crime he committed without regret. She loved him before, but now she is truly in his heart, sharing his pain, his secrets. I have about 75 pages left, and I've just learned that the narrator has figured out that Frank knows about the murder, but Maxim does not know that Frank knows. I'm still in suspense, and I want to have this book finished before the weekend is up. I'm also really curious to find out how Ben, who first implied Rebecca was evil, will factor into the story's end. 

• Inveterate = settled into a habit
• "sixth-form prefect" = equivalent enough to class president, but in UK educational terms
• Colonnade = series of trees planted in a long row
• Punctilious = strict in the observance of formalities
• Awkward pause in conversation = an angel passing overhead (192)

vocabulary master

I heard about the book "Rebecca" a long time ago, back when I was reading "Story of O," I think, and I thought it would be something I'd like to read, but I forgot about it until I saw it -- where else? -- in a Goodwill one day. The only thing I knew about it was that it was written in the first half of the 20th century, and that it's a mystery. I'm 100 pages in, and I haven't hit any mystery yet, but there are still several hundred pages to go.

I really liked the opening of the book. It starts with the narrator dreaming of Manderley, the famous homestead she first heard of as a child and later inhabited as the companion-wife of the mansion's master. Not much is foreshadowed -- just that somehow the couple loses the home. It has a haunting presence throughout the book, even before any real mystery comes into play. The narrator tells the story from her current perspective -- noting how she's changed since she first met Maxim as a naive 21-year-old. She and her employer were staying in the same hotel as Mr. de Winter, and when the gossipy "clumsy goat" Mrs. Van Hopper falls ill, the narrator finds herself swept up by Maxim. He's lonely, and she's infatuated. He decides to marry her and bring her to Manderley. 

Much attention is paid to descriptions of the house and its surrounding flora. The location seems ideal -- gardens, the sea. But the house's servants are bitter toward the new Mrs. de Winter, because Rebecca has been dead barely a year. Apparently the first Mrs. de Winter drowned, but the narrator doesn't know the details yet.

Daphne du Maurier's writing style is elegant yet easy. Most of the notes I've jotted are simply vocabulary words from the first 30 pages, but there have been a few memorable quotes. I think I've neglected analysis so far because the book is so long and I'm eager to get through it quickly. It's not the quickest of reads, but not the most difficult, either. There's a decent amount of suspense, but I'm not sure what to expect in terms of the extent to which Rebecca's ghost will make itself known.

• Mullioned = having vertical divisions of stone or wood
• Inviolate = undisturbed
• Spurious = counterfeit
• Vanguard = leaders of a movement or army
• Ablutions = cleansing of the body
• Bracken = area overgrown with ferns or shrubs
• Impunity = exemption from punishment
• Lorgnette = a pair of eyeglasses mounted on a handle
• Bougainvillaea = ornamental tropical woody vines
• Patent = obvious
• Gaucherie = awkwardness, lacking social grace
• Constitution = temperament (archaic)
• Impelled = urged to action
• Fettered = restricted, shackled
• Ducal = pertaining to a duke

I love the narrator's initial description of Maxim: "His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown. Could one but rob in of his English tweeds, and put him in black, with lace at his throat and wrists, he would stare down at us in our new world from a long distant past--a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy." (15)

I also love the associations the narrator makes with flowers, but this one is actually from Maxim: "A rose was one of the few flowers, he said, that looked better picked than growing. A bowl of roses in a drawing-room had a depth of colour and scent they had not possessed in the open. There was something rather blowsy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair." (31)

The narrator, Mrs. de Winter, is having a terribly awkward time at Manderley her first few days. She gets lost in the dark passages and doesn't know how to behave around the servants. She isn't sure what to do when Maxim isn't around, and she savors each moment she spends with him. She talks of wanting to bottle up memories, so that you could open them up and relive them whenever you wanted. She's trying not to digest the last words she had from Mrs. Van Hopper -- that Maxim does not love her, he just can't stand to stay in that house alone. I think Maxim does love her in his own way -- as he says, because she isn't 35 and wearing black satin. She's not the high-class social butterfly everyone expected Maxim to seek out. He needed someone different from Rebecca.

Second half, in a nutshell

At this point, Athena is still searching. Well, she'd probably say that she never stopped searching, but she did reach a point at which her life diverged into something she couldn't control. Her relationship with Heron really begins when they spend a day together Holly Golightly-style in London. He is falling in love with her, even though he has a girlfriend and she claims to have a boyfriend.

The biographer speaks with a historian friend of Heron's, who explains that the "new paganism" allows people to experience a spiritual life without institutionalized religion. I agree with this to an extent, but I think the same God who controls the universe is also a part of it, while the historian makes a distinction between the controlling god and the "part of the universe" mother-figure god. Mother Nature is not just an expression of the controlling God, it's a secular name for his essence that lives through it. I guess there's a gray area in there, because I don't believe we should be worshiping plants or anything. Although stating that makes me understand the distinction more.

So Athena conveniently made a ton of cash in her real-estate job, and can devote her time to her spiritual journey. She meets Heron's girlfriend -- and it took me way too long to figure out that Heron and Andrea were together -- and eventually takes her on as a student. One of the first things Athena tells her is, "When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you." That statement makes me want to get up and dance right now, because it's so right, but I never thought of it that way before.

Edda told Athena to learn by teaching, even when she thinks she has nothing to teach. She tells Athena to appreciate the tiniest things in life -- breathing, cooking, having someone open a door for you. That last one got to me, because I have been the girl who is almost insulted by a man opening a door for me. Edda puts it into a different perspective: "According to etiquette, this means, 'She needs me to do this because she's fragile,' but in my soul it is written: 'I'm being treated like a goddess, a queen.'" She also teaches Athena to look upon her anxieties with humor. At some point she also mentions the calligraphy to relate to Athena, reminding her how each pen stroke was a part of her soul. I love this idea, and it reminded me of when I was in high school. I used to write for hours -- poems, song lyrics, my own name, random words -- just to experience the act of writing as an expression of myself.

Athena's venture into teaching was borderline humiliating, but her students learned more than they thought at first. She had Andrea's theater friends lie down and make gestures based on her words. I admit I giggled when she said the word "center," because it reminded me of the porno-password scene from "The Cable Guy." Of course, they successfully connected with Athena and gestured toward their navels, protecting that center of light.

Amid her "female hysteria," Athena seems to have an urgent need for transformation. I'm not sure if this has to do with her near-transformation into the voice of a deity, or the need to understand things from more than one perspective. But constantly throughout the book, things, people, auras are being transmuted into more intense forms. As I glance outside and see that half the evening sky is still sunset blue, I think how the earth is constantly re-energizing its capabilities. And that's what changes in life do to people.

Andrea is beginning to feel threatened by Athena, because she knows her boyfriend is infatuated with her. She takes herself into Athena's soul, play-acting her role in a theatrical expression of a village turning away from a supposedly insightful newcomer. She's pleased with the result, and it foreshadows Athena's second rejection by religious society. But Athena does attract followers. The group she led at Andrea's theater expands because Athena seems to be channeling a spirit after dancing off-beat to her drum-heavy foreign music. By breaking the rhythm, Edda says one can more fully experience the talent. She experienced this by forcing herself to knit badly. I don't knit, but I can relate to this through writing. As a journalist, I learned to write using a formula. I got out of touch with my creative side. But I've found that writing differently -- not badly, but spontaneously and nonsensically -- can ultimately spawn more beautiful prose.

Athena and Andrea are not friends, but they respect each other as student and teacher. Their first one-on-one lesson consists of them stripping down, literally (but not sexually), to gain a unique trust and vulnerability. They have to be on the same level to experience the right confrontation.

The group lessons are what get out of hand for Athena. She likely should have simply continued with individual lessons with Andrea and possibly a few others, but she let her divine spark become a sideshow gypsy act. I'm not sure it was vanity that led to her losing control, but perhaps it was more of a facade of naivety and a lack of consideration of consequences. She didn't care what people thought of her, and she thought she could almost live above the law because she was so in touch with what she saw as a "natural law." Heron says he witnessed "the transformation of a woman into an icon" (229). Also on that page, he quotes one of her sermons, and I think one thing she says is enlightening in its succinctness: "What is sin? It is a sin to prevent Love from showing itself."

Amidst the uproar against her supposedly satanic rituals, Athena almost loses custody of her son and escapes under the elaborate guise of a brutal murder. Yes, Athena is alive and well, And the book's second "big twist I should've already figured out" is revealed: the "biographer" is her actually-not-invisible boyfriend, and he really does work for Scotland Yard. So her excuses for rebuffing Heron were not just excuses. I guess she needed a male to understand her spirit world, since her boyfriend admits to not partaking. But it's beautiful because she respects him for it.

However, I'm realizing now that despite these twists, it's almost disappointing that there wasn't really a brutal murder. I'm glad Athena is alive and all, but they had me built up for some dramatic exit from the world. Maybe that's why I put off blogging the rest of this book for as long as I did. There just wasn't enough "wow" factor to compel me to share. Although I really think I learned some things from this book, and I would like to read it again in the semi-near future.

• Dolmen = tomb resembling a portal
  
• Mandala = symbol representing effort to reunify the self
  
• Immemorial = extending back beyond memory, record or knowledge
  
• Calumny = slanderous lie