![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() That secret, of course, which is about Amy’s paternity, creates an inevitable if unintended distance between Isabelle and her daughter. Strout suggests early on that there is more to Isabelle’s story, that she is withholding things from Amy, to pique our interest. ![]() And Strout moves flawlessly between both of their perspectives, granting each of them validity and building our intimacy, so the contrast of Amy’s desires against Isabelle’s resolve is deeply felt. Kate Milliken: Obviously Amy wants what she can’t have, but she has what she does because Isabelle herself made so many sacrifices. For years, Amy has ”wanted a different mother,” more like “mothers in television ads.” How does Strout use this contrast to build their conflicts? Jane Ciabattari: Amy, the teenager, and Isabelle, her mother, yearn for connection but are driven apart by a ”confluence of different longings.” The choices Isabelle has made, ending in her working as a secretary in a mill in Shirley Falls, a small New England town, have shaped Amy’s life. It prompted me to mine that time in life for my own storytelling purposes. This novel dramatized, painfully well, the fraught emotional complexities of being a teenager and wanting to separate from your mother. ![]()
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