Hello all. Just wanted to briefly thank those of you have taken the time to read and comment. I’m very grateful to wOw for giving me the opportunity to talk to readers directly, a rare experience for a writer, especially a hermit like me.

I spend so much time alone with my dogs that I have to fight the urge to bark whenever someone comes to the door.

It’s nice to engage in human discourse for a change! (with apologies to my husband but after 36 years of marriage he has long ceased to seem human and has officially attained the status of sofa or large appliance.)

It’s very interesting to me that the Flanagans are so widely characterized as being dysfunctional and outrageous since I have never seen them that way. I prefer to think of them as being unconventional—of course, as someone who recently tried to give herself a temporary facelift using veterinary tape, I may not be a credible judge of what constitutes normalcy.

The Flanagans are performance artists—they love to entertain and they want to be entertained. They’re appalled by sentimentality and would rather be perceived as being uncaring rather than as being maudlin.

No member of the Flanagan family aspires to say "I love you," to another person. They express love through their intense level of engagement with each other.

To me, rather than exhibiting dysfunction, they are laboring under the practical and psychic burden of having succumbed to a greater—or lesser beast—than bad mechanics. They’ve yeilded to the temptations of self-titillation at the expense of authenticity.

This is what compels Collie’s early struggle in the family—he intuits that something is wrong and wrestles to make it right; Collie, in his heart, would rather be dull than be entertaining. His initial response to his family is a variation on ‘ride ‘em, rope ‘em, brand ‘em, don’t try to understand ‘em.’

Eventually, tragedy propels him to challenge himself and his family in a more profound way—though, in some ways, he comes full circle.

So I guess to ask me if the Flanagans are caricatures of real people would be to anticipate that I think of them as cartoons, when, truly, I think of them as the best and worst of what makes us human.

In the interest of full disclosure, however, I did have a maiden aunt who once disappeared for 10 hours waiting for her dog to make the decision to return home.

Niki, concerning your question about the mother’s obsession with the poet, Rupert Brooke—Anais fetishizes good looks and Rupert Brooke was an unusually handsome man who attracted widespread acclaim for his appearance among both men and women.

Brooke was the rarest of creatures—he was both beautiful and brilliant—a combination that rarely occurs in nature—the daily claims of celebrity journalism notwithstanding.

He also exhibited great personal courage, dying as a result when he was only 27 years old. Since the book is a kind of noisey meditation on what it means to be brave, Brooke represents more than just a random eccentric object of the mother’s affection. He made sense to me in the context of the story and its themes.

Also, I have been stalking Brooke across an ocean and a century and have indeed been a full-fledged member of the Rupert Brooke Society.

While I love the gothic elements associated with the literary history of the southern states, I would be the greatest of pretenders to try to infuse any of that mystique into my own writing.

Actually, as someone who has never been anywhere much further than the local grocery store, I guess I would have to define my writing as being less southern in its influence and more "stockboy to aisle six, please."

Dear readers

I love this conversation about dysfunctional vs unconventional or non conformist

One definition of dysfunctional is abnormal or impaired functioning whereas a definition of unconventional is out of the ordinary—what distinguishes dysfunctional from unconventional—the impact on others? its ability to change others behavior in problematic ways? or is it merely semantics to distinguish one from the other.  For me-uncoventional suggests an  independent thinking style and has a positive quality.Also how does Elizabeth’s wonderful sense of humor impact how we view the characters?

your thoughts?

Roxanne

ps I looked up dysfunctional in my oxford 2 volume dictionary circa 1986 and dysfunctional is not there!! Reasons? even a magnifying glass cannot make up for my 60 year old deteriorating eyes? in 1986 the usage of the word was not at a sufficient level to be included? there werent any dysfunctional people before 1986? or I dont know how to use a dictionary?