#156 Sinking House- T.C. Boyle
After 50 years of marriage Murial buried her husband. She is
relieved but unhinged. She needs to cleanse herself, she needs to wash away the
bad years. So she turns on all the water faucets in her house. For weeks the
water runs, and she sits and listens to the water pouring like she used to listen
to her husband pouring his vodka:
“When it was quiet—in the early morning or late at night—she
could distinguish the separate taps, each with its own voice and rhythm, as
they dripped and trickled from the far corners of the house.”
Next door, a younger couple starts to notice flooding in their
yard, and under their house. They confront Murial and demand she stop her
foolishness. The man's actions and demeanor remind her of her dead husband, before he got
violent. But his aggression shocks his wife who doesn’t like this new side of him:
“Sure there was a problem here and she was glad he was
taking care of it, but did he have to get violent?”
The water eventually gets turned off but it doesn’t solve anything:
“The place was deadly, contaminated, sick as the grave—after all was said and
done, it just wasn’t clean enough.”
Meg sees her future in Murial, battered, dejected,
wasted away: “Meg had felt like sinking into the ground.”
Clearly water is a powerful theme, as is the power of nature
and time. Perhaps there are homage intentions here to Poe’s Fall of the House
of Usher, with the connecting theme of woman being trapped.
what point of view is this told in?
ReplyDelete3rd person. part of it is written from meg's pov and part of it from muriel's pov
Deletethird person
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