![]() She notes, for example, “There is, below the surface of every conversation in which intimacies are shared, an erotic current. ![]() She’s good at this kind of analysis, and so she learns from all those heart-to hearts she reports on. ![]() When she leaves her husband - her good husband - she notes that that she was always “best at being a vessel for the desires of others” - and thus she wanted to be used as a means, not an end, “and mostly it made me miserable and was evil besides.” she never quite completed, then dropping this doubtful non-achievement as she moves away from the academic world and confronts issues in her marriage. Miranda Popkey charts this growth perceptively, showing the young narrator proud of her the Ph.D. One way of describing her in her parental avatar is that after treading a rocky path, and drifting - or rather plunging - into alcoholism, she seems to have grown up. The conversations she reports span 17 years and occur in several places: In Ann Arbor where she is a graduate student, then in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other California cities until finally we discover her in the San Joaquin Valley, where she is living in a small house with her child. Trapped yes, but in a hedge maze of her own careful design.” Sequestered in a domestic plot, she worked with tools at her disposal. Thinking about this, the narrator reflects, “She was less a master of fate, captain of her ship, than she was a clever gardener. Since she needs control, to be the child rather than the parent in the marriage, this doomed their relationship. “His desire for control stemmed not from his power but from its lack,” she notes. “It proved a larger point that I could be totally emotionally open with someone, totally vulnerable and he would still want to sleep with me.”Īrtemisia’s contribution to the mosaic of stories is a monologue in which she explains that her first husband’s one violent episode sprang from his loss of control in their marriage.
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