When you're feeling really hungry, running on empty, have you ever found yourself eating the first thing edible you find in the fridge? Lizzy reminds me of such a starving woman, taking in whatever is offered her. Is Lizzy trying to fill the gaps in her life left by her parents death, her uncle's removal from her life by the church and then his death. And when we learn she is hit by a car while running away from her husband, who is about to leave her as well, we as readers feel overwhelmed by the losses in her life. Even the man we come to know as Harry Griggs, leaves Lizzy on the side of the road after her accident, even a stranger leaves her to die alone.

I don't remember, in Wood's description of Drew's and Lizzy's courtship, of Lizzy ever stating that she loved Drew. The relationship came together from their acknowledgment of the other being "The one who will save me... " Their marriage begins breaking down and Drew meets a woman at one of the weddings he photographs. Drew does state after Lizzy's accident that he didn't know if he would've left Lizzy, but the unknown and the memory of what occurred between them just before Lizzy was hit is still between them.

I find I don't want to follow my usual regiment with this Read Around Maine selection. I usually only read the chapters or stories we will be discussing for the week. I plan on breaking with tradition this time and plan on finishing Wood's novel this evening. Although we as readers have been presented with what appears to be pretty much the full story, there are too many slightly dangling threads for me to really believe I know all there is to know about Wood's characters. At this point, should we really believe that Father Mike was innocent? The very beginning of the novel starts with Lizzy stating "I tell this with the authority of memory". And yet in the next few paragraphs we hear that the fourteen year old girl who hit Lizzy has said enough times that she thought she hit a deer, that the girl comes to accept or believe that she really thought she hit a deer and not a person.

E-mail this entry to a friend