Ever felt overshadowed by a sibling or struggled to find your own identity? Katherine Paterson's "Jacob Have I Loved" brings these raw emotions to the surface, and we're peeling back the layers. Join us as we navigate Sarah Louise's turbulent journey, from her envy-ridden youth on the Chesapeake Bay to her quest for self-recognition as a nurse midwife (or alternatively, her journey from maybe a 5 in Maryland to a 10 in a small Appalachian Mountains town).
Our conversation takes some unexpected turns as we tackle themes like teenage crushes, emotional abuse, and the generational dynamics that steer Sarah Louise's path. We get hung up on the romantic relationships in this book and Hannah reveals she has a very forgiving nature. In this exploration of "Jacob Have I Loved," we promise a journey through the complex waters of sibling rivalry, with a touch of humor and a crab-related quiz to boot (because Chesapeake Bay, duh!).
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Instagram @thesebooksmademe or on Twitter @PGCMLS, with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.
Ever felt overshadowed by a sibling or struggled to find your own identity? Katherine Paterson's "Jacob Have I Loved" brings these raw emotions to the surface, and we're peeling back the layers. Join us as we navigate Sarah Louise's turbulent journey, from her envy-ridden youth on the Chesapeake Bay to her quest for self-recognition as a nurse midwife (or alternatively, her journey from maybe a 5 in Maryland to a 10 in a small Appalachian Mountains town).
Our conversation takes some unexpected turns as we tackle themes like teenage crushes, emotional abuse, and the generational dynamics that steer Sarah Louise's path. We get hung up on the romantic relationships in this book and Hannah reveals she has a very forgiving nature. In this exploration of "Jacob Have I Loved," we promise a journey through the complex waters of sibling rivalry, with a touch of humor and a crab-related quiz to boot (because Chesapeake Bay, duh!).
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Instagram @thesebooksmademe or on Twitter @PGCMLS, with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.
All right, we're live.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Hawa, I'm Darlene, I'm Hannah and I'm Heather, and this is our podcast. These Books Made Me. Today, we're going to be talking about Jacob. Have I Loved by Katherine Patterson. Friendly warning as always, this podcast contains spoilers. If you don't yet know who can't find any references to how to speak to cats in the Bible, proceed with caution and shout out to our colleague, kelly, who suggested this book for the podcast.
Speaker 3:All right, so we'll start off with our usual question, which is what did this book mean to you? And I'm curious is this everyone's first time reading it? And, if not, how did this reread compare to your memories of reading it when you were younger? This was my first time. As usual, I'm with you, hawa. It was my first time too, and I was telling everyone that I got to a certain part and then I closed it and I needed to know, like I needed to go look for the plot summary, because I wasn't sure if it was going to be that kind of book, and it luckily wasn't, so I continued reading.
Speaker 2:I also went in without reading the plot summary because I was just like I'm gonna have to read it anyway. So what's the point of?
Speaker 3:me knowing Were you having like sisterhood flashbacks to like an inappropriate relationship. Yeah, I was like, wait, no one mentioned this when we like talked about how this was a future like episode, so I kind of knew it couldn't be anything inappropriate, but I still needed to verify for myself.
Speaker 4:So I read it growing up I don't remember what age. In fact, I don't remember anything about the book other than I read it. So I was kind of like reading it for the first time. Even though I know I read it, I remember liking it. Other than that I got nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I read this during like fourth or fifth grade. I know I did it for accelerated reader points. A lot of my books during those years were to get accelerated reader points so I could buy candy in the store which was what we could change.
Speaker 3:Our accelerated reader points for Positive reinforcement yeah.
Speaker 1:I would usually try to read the books that were worth the most points like even if they were too hard for me. This was not too hard for me, but it was like a longer book because I think it was like a couple hundred pages, so it had more points than like smaller books or more slim books. My recollection of it was that it was a book where the two sisters hated each other and I think I vaguely remembered the hurricane scene, but I did not remember much else. You know, the Katherine Patterson book that really stuck with me was Bridge to Terabithia. But I liked this book when I read it as a kid and you know reading it now. I think it's well written. You know, I think the language is very evocative and beautiful in points and she did a lot of research to try to make it sound historical fiction. So, yeah, I didn't remember it being quite so nuanced and weighty as a book.
Speaker 4:I know we may have to cover Bridge to Terabithia at some point, the book that traumatized many of us growing up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to say that it was my first time reading it, but then I was also. I always, whenever it is my first time, I always think like, oh, how would I have read this if I was younger? And to Heather's point about it being very nuanced, I feel like there are not many things I would have latched onto as a kid. I still prefer it when it's like that, Like I still prefer like reading it as a kid, not getting much out of it, but then reading it as an adult and then kind of finding more there.
Speaker 1:So I kind of wish that that was the experience I had.
Speaker 1:But yeah, this may kind of lead into the sort of broader issue that I think we've talked about before, that a lot of times it's adults picking the award winners for kids, and so frequently it seems like the award winning books have a lot to appeal to adults in them but maybe aren't, as they're not fun reads necessarily Like they do tend to be a little bit weightier or more nuanced or more poetic or historical. Fiction does really well in award seasons, it seems like, and I think this book might be kind of a good example of that because again it didn't really stick with me beyond. I remember enjoying it as a kid but you know, I didn't take away from it probably what I took away from it now as an adult reading it Like I think I more clearly understood what she was trying to do with the book this time. All right, we're moving on to a plot summary.
Speaker 1:This one's pretty dense 13-year-old, sarah Louise Bradshaw, lives in a waterman's village on the isolated island of Rass in the Chesapeake Bay in 1941. While Sarah Louise prefers her full name, she is alternately called Weez or Louise by everyone in the village. Her home life is complicated. She is a twin and her sister Caroline was born fragile but beautiful and has received attention for her health issues, her beauty and her musical gifts since birth. Sarah Louise resents the attention and adoration her sister receives and wishes she could have been born a boy, believing her opportunities would have been better and she would have been more valued by her family. Her father is a war wounded waterman eking out a living on the Chesapeake. Her mother is a college educated, mainlander and former teacher who left life on the mainland behind after falling in love with her husband, a crabber and fisherman, who left school in seventh grade. Her paternal grandmother also lives with the family and is extremely religious and favors Caroline. Sarah Louise helps supplement the family income by taking out and favors Caroline. Sarah Louise helps supplement the family income by taking out a skiff to catch whatever can be found and sold with a fellow misfit called Pernell.
Speaker 1:When Caroline is coddled and given private voice lessons on the mainland due to her talent, sarah Louise swallows her bitterness and looks for something, anything that would make her feel special. When a mysterious older man arrives in town and takes up residence in the old, abandoned Wallace house, sarah Louise thinks she's found her opportunity. She believes he's a German spy and she would be decorated by President Roosevelt if she catches him. So she enlists, call and they start counter espionage efforts. Ultimately, those efforts do not catch a spy, but they do catch Mr Hiram Wallace as a surrogate father of sorts for Call and as a friend for Sarah Louise.
Speaker 1:A series of adventures transpire as Hiram and Liss call on Sarah Louise to help him restore the home of Trudy Braxton, the village cat lady. After finding the house and the very ill Mrs Braxton overrun with cats, hiram decides the only way to dispose of the feral cats is to drown them. Sarah Louise flees from the boat to avoid the task and ultimately no one can bring themselves to kill the cats In steps Caroline, who drugs the cats and cons the local neighbors into taking one cat apiece. A violent hurricane hits the island, destroying Hiram's home. Sarah Louise goes out in a storm to rescue Hiram and he begins living with the Bradshaws. Sarah Louise realizes she has a crush on Hiram and is devastated when Caroline receives Hiram's praise when she comes up with a quickie marriage scheme that resolves Hiram's homelessness and Trudy's inability to live alone without care. Hiram then pays for Caroline to attend a mainland boarding school but makes no such offer to Sarah Louise, who ultimately drops out of school to help her father on the boat when Carl leaves to join the Navy. She plans to leave the island when Carl returns and can rejoin her father on the boat. That never happens, as Carl decides to leave the island behind to go to school and marry Caroline.
Speaker 1:Sarah Louise, in the meantime, is stuck at home with her increasingly demented grandmother, who follows Mrs Bradshaw around quoting scripture and calling her a whore. Sarah Louise finally breaks, and years of resentment come pouring out Anger at her grandmother's cruelty, disgust at the waste her mother made of her privilege, jealousy at the privilege that Caroline has been given. Her mother tells her that she will miss her horribly, but they would never force Sarah Louise to stay on the island. Sarah Louise can finally shake off her feelings of obligation to her family and figure out what she wants for herself in life. She has always wanted to see the mountains and become a doctor.
Speaker 1:After hitting a roadblock due to being a girl, sarah Louise is denied medical school entrance by her advisor at UMD Go Terps Actually, this is not a great look for Maryland and transfers to the nursing school at Kentucky. She becomes a nurse midwife in a small town called Truett in the Appalachian Mountains. She marries a Catholic widower, becomes a stepmother and ultimately has a son she names for her father. The book closes as Sarah Louise delivers a local woman's twins, giving the stronger twin to the mother and taking the fragile twin to her own breast, to the mother, and taking the fragile twin to her own breast.
Speaker 4:Okay, we're going to do a brief author bio. Katherine Patterson was born Katherine Wommeldorf on October 31st 1932 in Xinjiang, what is now Huayan, china, to missionary parents George Raymond and Mary Gatchius Wommeldorf. She is the third of their five children. Chinese was Catherine's first language and she would later learn English with a British accent. Catherine's family returned to the United States at the start of World War II and they lived in North Carolina and Virginia. Their return to China was indefinitely postponed.
Speaker 4:Patterson experienced trouble making friends and fitting in with the American children. She went to school with, and was both a reader and a writer from a young age. As a young adult, patterson attended King College in Bristol, tennessee, for four years and studied English and literature for four years and studied English and literature After graduation in 1954, she taught sixth grade for a year in Lovettsville, virginia, which would be the future inspiration for Bridge to Terabithia. Patterson then earned her MA in teaching from the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, before traveling to Kobe and Shikoku, japan, to serve as a missionary. She would return to the United States in 1961 for a fellowship in New York City at Union Theological Seminary, where she would also meet John Barstow Patterson. They married in 1962 and would raise four children together.
Speaker 4:Patterson began writing while working at a prep school called Pennington School for Boys in New Jersey, when her work creating curricula inspired her to start writing fiction. After enrolling in a creative writing class, she wrote and eventually published her first work in 1973, the Sign of the Chrysanthemum, a young adult novel set in Japan. Patterson's famous book Bridget Herbithia was published in 1977, and Jacob have I Loved was published in 1980. Patterson has received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the ALA and is the vice president of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance, which advocates for literature and literacy. She lives in Barr, vermont.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go ahead and dive into our discussion. This book is local to us. It centers very prominently on the Chesapeake Bay and the bay, more or less, is a main character in the book. What did you all think about the way that Patterson characterizes the bay, the role it plays in the book? Anything really?
Speaker 4:Well, there's a paragraph I'm trying to I think it's relatively near the start of the book, let me see if I can find it where they describe how the character of the bay and how it the character of the bay and how it women the women who live there don't love it. It sweeps their men away, occupies their time. I'm summing this up poorly, but let me see if I can find that. I feel like that maybe is a. That struck me as a good sort of summation of at least one characterization of the bay.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think I found it. She says the women of my island were not supposed to love the water. Water was the wild, untamed kingdom of our men. And though water was the element in which our tiny island lived and moved and had its being, the women resisted its power over their lives, as a wife might pretend to ignore the existence of her husband's mistress. And then it says for the men of the island, except for the preacher and the occasional male teacher, the bay was an all-consuming passion. It ruled their waking hours, sapped their bodily strength and, from time to tragic time, claimed their mortal flesh. That was it. That was the passage. Time claimed their mortal flesh. That was it.
Speaker 2:That was the passage I will say that, like her writing is just beautiful there.
Speaker 1:I mean it does not feel like a book meant for a fifth grader. Just the level of the writing at times seems. You know she's just working at a higher level than a lot of you know and so much stuff is serialized at that age. So we get kind of in the like plotty and formulaic thing. But that passage could stand as adult fiction with no problems at all. Like I wouldn't bat an eye if I saw that in an adult fiction book and I would still think it was good writing, which I like.
Speaker 1:That I think that that's a really, really good quality for an author to have, and I think we've talked about authors who don't condescend to kids before and I think this book is very much an example of that Kids can appreciate complex writing. Do you want to talk about the bay? Do you want to talk about the bay anymore?
Speaker 3:We can really talk about it on top of anything that's right, I was trying to form my thoughts, because I do feel like it's really interesting the way that she characterizes the bay and then, like then Sarah Louise's desire to see the mountains Like something just so completely removed from what the bay is, even if she herself had said how much she loved it Almost opposite, yeah, and it's its own little like ecosystem or like it's very isolated in many ways. So it's interesting that then, yeah, like I said, that then she then ends up somewhere else. That's also really like insular and isolated and that's why she kind of really had to stay, because they don't have access to medical care otherwise, like if she didn't stay, I think I think ecosystem is a really good term for it.
Speaker 4:I was thinking as we were talking about this, now it's, it's very like you said, it's isolated, it's insular. I mean you kind of draw a parallel between the bay, which is kind of sheltered from the rest of the ocean, like they. They explicitly mentioned at one point that, unlike some of the other people who work on the water, the people who make their living on the bay don't need to worry about submarines because they're they're, they're sheltered, um, but at the same time, you know it's it's pretty limited. You make your living this way. You talk to these people, you speak this way.
Speaker 1:You know this many there's only one religion, like they say.
Speaker 4:The whole island is methodist it's a it's a tiny little uh monolithic in a way, culture, and you either like it or you leave. So if you adapt to it and it speaks to you, great. If you can make a living there, great. But the options are limited, even though you're sheltered in some ways from, maybe, things that you don't care for outside or feel unsafe to you.
Speaker 1:It is interesting though, like Darlene said, that the community she chooses for herself. She even says that it's, in some ways, it's more of an island than Rass Island is, because she compares, you know, their jeeps to the boats and you know, the mountains ringing them in, as like the bay surrounding the island because it really keeps outsiders away and this, you know, the culture in the city or the town that she ends up in, in Truett, it also has this, like it's predominantly, you know, polish immigrants and it's, you know, a lot of Catholics there, and has its own identity as well. And then she's able to kind of make her own identity there because she doesn't have the baggage that she had with the Islanders viewing her within the light context of her family. So she goes there, but then she's in just a different community where she repeats her mom's history basically, and I did think it was sort of interesting that they paralleled her with her mom so much, because it seemed like the mom was also struggling to stand out, like she didn't want to be basic and go to Paris like everyone else, like that was cause she's like, well, everyone was doing that at the time.
Speaker 1:You went to Paris and you tried to write a novel, and that was what privileged ladies of her time were doing. And while she kind of wanted that, she wanted to do something that stood out and was different. So she went with this romantic notion of like, oh, I'll go to this island, and you know it's so removed and all of this, but then she stayed. I did want to ask about the mom and dad's relationship. You know it is generally depicted as fairly healthy, like they very clearly are still very much in love with each other. But that being said, you know Sarah also has this. Like Sarah Louise thinks about whether her parents' marriage will survive. Like she gets a magazine at one point.
Speaker 1:That's like to diagnose her parents' relationship health and she worries about that because she can't see what they would have in common, which you know, with her and her sister they have nothing in common and they have a completely fractured relationship. So I think she's sort of putting that onto her parents' relationship as well. Like, how do you tolerate each other when there's no common ground? And she can't really understand their relationship until she meets her husband and and joseph.
Speaker 1:that was kind of a weird meeting though, because yeah, they just sit down for coffee and yeah, and then she like really resents that he says that like the lord brought her there she's like what do you know about me? And then like his response to her she was like then I knew I was going to marry him, which did feel a little odd to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was wondering if I just missed something there, because I was like I don't know how his response sealed the deal for you. That being said, I think they did do a nice call back to her dad singing to the oysters Is that what it was? And so, hearing you talk now, I was wondering if that also kind of answers that question Like why does Ms Bradshaw stay? Or like how can the relationship work right? And you find out all her backstory about how she used to write poetry, and so it's kind of like that romanticism exists within him too. It's just a little, you know, kind of under the surface. And then I think she, when she meets her husband, I think she says like she could envision him singing to the oysters, right, yeah, so she says.
Speaker 2:But then, oh my blessed, he smiled. I guess from that moment I knew I was going to marry Joseph God Pope, three motherless children, unspellable surname, and all For when he smiled he looked like the kind of man who would sing to the oysters, but she spent Katherine Patterson spent more time describing the chemistry she felt with the captain Absolutely.
Speaker 4:And his hands, beautiful hands. Yeah, I guess we should address that elephant in the room, since we almost made Darlene stop reading the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sarah Louise's crush on Hiram is oh it's kind of painful too, because, like I, you know, when you're that age you feel things so intensely, even if it's a stupid thing. Which this is Like. Clearly he's an older man, like she's 14. And then she still gets rejected by him because he turns, like all of his affection and attention onto Caroline.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm like like looking through some of the highlights that I have. One of the highlights is I guess this is when they're talking about like, oh, the captain should marry like Trudy, and they're like, oh, they won't do anything. And it says I was so hot all over at the suggestion of the captain doing something that I could hardly breathe.
Speaker 4:Girl, he's like your, he could be your grandpa, maybe stop worrying about what they're doing or not doing.
Speaker 1:Well, and then the grandma like leans into it too, because then she's like weirdly chastising Sarah Louise for being like a harlot, for, like it's, the dynamic in that family is really dysfunctional.
Speaker 3:But it's so interesting that, like she notices the crush, because I think then it's revealed to us later that she too had a crush on the captain when he was younger. So I thought that that was a nice callback, that it wasn't just out of nowhere. She just is really discerning, because everything else she says is kind of very wacky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the grandma is like unhinged as a religious zealot, which that relationship between the Bradshaw's I mean. I guess it was a different time and you just had to put up with a lot more, but it is. It is never clear to me why the dad never really sticks up for the mom, like he's super passive, like he kind of redirects, but not very effectively. I mean, she's following her around just constantly talking about like you're a sinful whore that you know my son deserves better. Basically, and to the degree that her mom is like you know what, I'm going to go outside and wash the windows with ammonia, just to get away from the grandmother yeah.
Speaker 2:Could it be a religious thing, like almost, like they feel like they have to hold their grandmother in this type of respect, but it seems like the grandmother is like the more like, overly religious one, so maybe he just I don't know.
Speaker 4:I'm trying to figure out like do we think the grandmother is? She's suffering from early dementia. I'm trying to figure out what her I think so.
Speaker 1:By the end, she seems like something is, like, actually wrong with her At the beginning of the book, though I think it's pretty clear that the grandmother has always been like she is at the beginning of the book, which is very cold to Sarah Louise. She kind of dotes on Caroline but is extremely like judgmental about people and, just you know, really religious and kind of. Everything is through this lens of like piousness and how you're supposed to be. Yeah, so like yes, it seems like the wheels are coming off worse at the end, but it also seems like she was always like that to some degree. It just maybe got more escalated.
Speaker 4:I kind of wanted to cheer for Sarah Louise when she decided to stop going to church, and I was like, well, let the grandmother deal with that.
Speaker 1:That was an interesting bit too. So there's that scene where Sarah Louise gets her first period and her mom lets her skip church, like pretends that she's sick, which that in of itself I think would have been like sinful but they don't want to let the grandmother know that. That's why she's missing church, which seemed weird to me, because I feel like the grandmother might have actually been okay with her missing for that reason, because like she had stained her.
Speaker 4:But the grandmother was upset at the mere idea of Sarah Louise's underwear drawer. So maybe the idea of her having a stain on her dress and underwear would have been too much.
Speaker 2:I was going to say maybe my thought about them not telling the grandmother about the period thing was maybe this was probably a reach to be honest, but maybe, like her, having her period made her a quote unquote woman now, and maybe the mother had some concerns about maybe if the grandmother would get into some kind of crazy overprotective mode.
Speaker 1:That's just a reach to be honest, but she says Caroline had started her period the year before, or something like that, or two years before.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And the grandmother was like so so much favoritism towards Caroline and doesn't seem to be trying to like hook her up with a local boy or something Though I guess ultimately she does hook up with a local boy, which that also seemed really strange to me. Like I did not feel like there was the groundwork to establish why Caroline and Call would have ever ended up together.
Speaker 2:Especially considering that the whole time Call was gone. He only wrote Wee's one letter and I guess he was making sure he was keeping up with Caroline, because when he came back and he's like, she's like, yeah, she's at Juilliard, he's just like I know, and then she goes and puts on this super cutesy dress, just for her to find out that you married to my twin sister or engaged.
Speaker 1:I got it from Carl's perspective like he went after the prettiest girl on the island and you know whatever, but what was the appeal for her exactly like caroline's, living her new york life, that's true.
Speaker 3:Why?
Speaker 1:she has, like, all the options in the world and she goes with a man in uniform, but call seemed very off to me in certain ways, Like the beginning of the book, like I feel like his, his very literal sort of approach to everything, like are we meant to think he's neurodivergent, because that was my read at the beginning of the book, but then I feel like that was clearly not supposed to be how he was once he came back from the Navy. So we're like people just need to get out of that annoying, stifling environment of the island to become who they're meant to be, or something.
Speaker 3:I don't know, but I will say that because I you know I had stopped reading and then I read the whole plan summary.
Speaker 3:I knew that Carl and Caroline were going to get together and so I think I then started putting meaning to any interaction that they had Like. I think that, like if I had not done that, I think I then started putting meaning to any interaction that they had like I think that, like if I had not done that, I think my first I think what would have like stood out to me was Sarah Louise's like annoyance with Caroline always asking about call, like I think I would have focused more on like Sarah Louise being a little bit more like jealous and protective of her friend, versus like because I, you know, read the plot summary, I knew they would end up together. I was like, oh, I wonder if these are like small subtle hints that caroline kind of already, even before he leaves, already kind of likes kong, which?
Speaker 1:I understand is like a teen feeling oh, I think yeah, like on the island, there would be no options. I mean, you're looking at a place that has like what? Like a couple hundred people that live in it or something. That's what it seems like. And you know how much of that would be kids, like I don't know, 50, 60 kids or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're high school. They were the only few freshmen, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, like, what were the options? You'd have like five people in your class or something, which was weird, with Sarah not having friends too, because like who else could she be friends with?
Speaker 2:She's got her sister call and like there's maybe like two other people, her age on the island. I mean, maybe she had to get away from the island, see what other men were out there, what they had to offer for her to, like you know, fall back and be like, oh, this is the one for me. I don't know, I'm just reaching here.
Speaker 3:I took it as the more she explored the world, the more that it was like this is a really safe person for me. I know he's going to worship me because you know like he's still going to in his mind it would be that you know she was the prettiest girl on the island and so I don't know. That's how I took it, because then I was thinking, I was thinking a lot about it as it was finishing. You know they don't really say a lot about their dynamic as a married couple, but I kept thinking like are they going to last? Because the more that she like lives life, and especially like in New York, she'll realize that there's only but so much that that sort of like unwavering devotion to you is going to be enough.
Speaker 1:I think she's going to get bored with him.
Speaker 2:But I mean he's lived life too right Like he was in the Navy.
Speaker 3:He's seen the world? Yeah, he visited all the islands, but so has like everyone now, at that point because,
Speaker 4:of the war.
Speaker 1:So that's like every man her age would have done that.
Speaker 4:I mean, honestly, it's weird to me that people who grow up that closely together and I guess the fact that you're in a small environment with few options goes some way to counteract that but I mean, I think they've done research that shows when you grow up in a close environment with people, there are like biological reasons why people don't end up as likely to be attracted to them. So it's weird to me that Sarah Louise or Carolyn would be and Carl would be interested in each other at all.
Speaker 1:Frankly, Well, it's sort of like Harry Potter paradox too, right, like everyone in Harry Potter ends up with another person that was at Hogwarts with them, basically, which is weird, because they have like classes with like 10 people in them. You know like they have a very small pool as well, with like 10 people in them. You know like they have a very small pool as well. But it seems, I don't know like I guess maybe we're just supposed to believe that those like ties of home and those shared bonds are like stronger than what seems to be Caroline's like real personality, because she always, from jump, seems to be like well, I'm going to be famous and I'm getting out of here and I don't know. She just seems so much more into a cosmopolitan lifestyle, which did not seem like Hall, but I guess being in the Navy changed his mind about things.
Speaker 4:Maybe there's fewer young men now, because a lot of them died.
Speaker 2:I think also something to take into consideration as well is that we really are seeing these characters through Sarah Louise's eyes.
Speaker 2:So, you know, like her sister may not be as annoying or dreadful as we think and Call may not be as gross as she made him seem in the beginning. And also, something else to take into consideration is that I gathered from quickly glancing at my unabridged e-book version was that they would go to the captain's house together and Sarah Louise wouldn't want to go because she was married to Trudy now, so maybe they had some kind of, you know, connection that formed from that as well.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think her main concern, honestly, I think she's. She seems like she's more irritated with the fact that her sister ended up with him than the fact that anybody that wasn't her ended up with him. If that makes sense, like this, this dislike that she has for her sister.
Speaker 1:Also, we're some of their fraternal right I mean they don't sound like they resemble each other at all.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they describe them as, I think, having different coloring, like carolyn's hair is different and it's different yeah, different, built differently, abridged version, so they might have skipped over that.
Speaker 2:Also, I have a fraternal twin sister as well and I think it's just so interesting that, like sorry to like skip around, but I think it's just so interesting that, like her, that she feels like her part of her reason for you know not reason, but like she feels like her and her sister don't have anything in common and that kind of maybe contributes to her dislike of her sister. I feel like me and my twin sister obviously we're not every twins in the world, but we are very different and I feel like that makes it why we work so well. But I also I think really what contributes to her dislike of her sister is probably more so like how everyone just seemed so concerned and fascinated with her from her being sick to her talents that it's just like she felt like she was an afterthought, like she wanted people to worry about her, and that's definitely not something that I felt like I had to worry about in my dynamic with my sister. Shout out to my girl.
Speaker 3:Hapsa, I was speaking to what you were saying earlier though. Yeah, there was a point in time, I think, when call comes back and then and Sarah Louise is really confused about like the fact that they're you know that him and Caroline are engaged, I I think at some point, I think Carl says like I bet you didn't think that that would happen, because you didn't. I forgot how he phrased it.
Speaker 2:He basically makes it seem like you look at me, like I'm this, but really, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1:I mean she was kind of a jerk to him like early in the book. You know she treats him like an idiot a lot of the time because he doesn't get any of her jokes and doesn't really care about the things that she cares about. So I mean I totally get why he wasn't into her. I just don't get why Caroline was into Carl.
Speaker 3:Well, but what I'm saying is that, because it's from Sarah Louise's perspective, yeah, like she did maybe portray him in a way that didn't look good, but anyone else would have seen like his charm, but just she never could. So do we think?
Speaker 1:that there's a possibility that Caroline only went with Cal just to spite Sarah Louise yes. I was thinking.
Speaker 3:I don't know, I know.
Speaker 1:Darlene, you said you went on like a Miss Marple tear after our Nancy drew one and I went on like a Poro tear around that same time and that's on the Nile. There's a thing where he's talking to Lynette Richway, the like main character, who's like the rich, beautiful one that has everything, versus her best friend Jackie, who is poor and you know, gets overlooked, kind of thing. And he says to Lynette, who is now marrying the person that would have been Jackie's fiance, like it's like when the person who has all of the sheep takes the one little ewe lamb that the poor person has, like that lamb is like everything to that person. Yeah, was, was she like enjoying the fact that she was again stealing something from Sarah Louise, like I? Like she did with the attention.
Speaker 2:I consider that, yeah, I feel like I don't think so. I think that to me it seems like I think that, as the one who was feeling neglected, I think Sarah Louise maybe held more resentment towards her sister than her sister held towards her. So I don't feel like.
Speaker 1:But like why is Caroline always making like jabs at her, like that she's dirty, that she like I feel like she very much is on the same side as the grandmother through a lot of the book and like I don't know, caroline's ego is kind of a lot.
Speaker 4:It is when she's writing her biography.
Speaker 1:Because people want to know this.
Speaker 2:Caroline, you haven't done anything yet.
Speaker 1:When she was in the choir performance and making fun of Betty Jean, like afterwards.
Speaker 2:It's just mean Like why do that Like.
Speaker 1:Your performance went well and yeah, I know that this is all through, like Sarah Louise's lens, and we should probably ask how reliable she is as a narrator. But, you know, assuming that there's some truth in how she's like depicting even the conversation with her mother where she really breaks down.
Speaker 2:Some things speak for themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I feel, like the mom really doesn't, doesn't refute anything that's happened to her. She's just kind of like, yeah, we're going to miss you a lot, like even if you don't know that. But she doesn't ever say like, oh well, sarah Louise, I'm sorry that you felt like we didn't know. You felt like that and like we've always loved you equally and we appreciated these things that you've done. All she ever gets is like some very low key acknowledgement, like thanks for bringing some money in. But Caroline is the favorite child, it seems like, and her mom doesn't even like backpedal from that. She's just like oh well, we'll really miss you, but we never would have forced you to stay here. You should have told us so. It seems like it was an accurate like version of how life in that house would have been so you know, when they're like oh, she's like oh, we'll miss you more.
Speaker 2:Do you believe that? Maybe for the mom okay, yeah, I can see that side notes to what you were saying earlier. The line from call was like oh, you never did think I was much to brag about now, did you?
Speaker 1:to be fair, he wasn't like he did not have a good personality, oh man.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I thought that was hilarious.
Speaker 2:Sorry, in the line there's a line where the captain says to give her a safe harbor. So Caroline, so maybe it is about having somebody safe, because Carl says she's alone in that world, she needs me. So it could be about that, maybe like a small you you know reserved island girl who is in this big city and maybe just needs a little bit of home to have with her when she's living this big fancy life.
Speaker 4:I don't know maybe people aren't uh falling over themselves for her fragile beauty in baltimore. They were there on the island right her Her debut in.
Speaker 3:New Haven. That reminds me of like that conversation on social media a few years ago where it was like a 10 and New York is not the same.
Speaker 1:It's like Caroline's really mid, but I just thought she was like oh, I've been downgraded.
Speaker 4:I made a mistake.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:That clear that like once she left if she hadn't kept being the like golden child. But she is still the golden child she leaves, she gets this full ride to Juilliard, then she gets a debut at, like the New Haven Opera. Like she is clearly achieving all of these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, her talent is. It is enough, like the New Haven opera, like she is clearly achieving all of these things, and at least her talent is it? Is enough.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know if they still think she's the most beautiful person, but at least her talent seems to be legitimate and on the level that she thought it was. But like, oh yeah, I don't know, I feel bad for Sarah Louise. It's a hard book to read at points because she is she's extremely angry throughout the book, which I think is a bold choice from the author, because Sarah Louise certainly at times is not super likable herself, like she is mean to call.
Speaker 2:Yeah, almost like we wonder why they're friends. But then he, you know he doesn't really have my option.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah I just. There's not a lot of likable characters in the book, so you really do have to try to believe Sarah Louise's version, because otherwise you're not gonna like anybody. I feel like.
Speaker 2:I like the orange Tomcat. He likes Ms Braxton, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to like the captain, because you know like.
Speaker 4:He's a weirdo, he's a weirdo, he is a weirdo.
Speaker 1:I do not understand what's going on with that man. There's a lot of strange things you know like. First of all, like his impulsively cutting the mask down was stupid, like the Islanders should of all. Like his impulsive like cutting the mask down was stupid, like the Islanders should have been like making fun of him for that. That was dumb. And then like when he comes back he's super weird.
Speaker 1:Like he doesn't tell people like, hey, y'all, I'm back, I'm going to fix up the house. He just like lives there like a creepo until the kids go spy on him. And then the house he just like lives there like a creepo until the kids go spy on him and then the house washes.
Speaker 2:I think the house washes away. He has nowhere to live. And then it's interesting that he lets his kids convince him to marry the crazy old cat lady.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which I then started to wonder about his I started to His motives. His motives because he turned so, but he was like that sounds great, great idea, great idea.
Speaker 1:Kids, you guys really nailed this one, but also if she had all that money, why was she living in such squalor? She could have paid like she had enough money that he took her money to send Caroline to boarding school. So there was significant funds. Why wasn't she just paying a village housewife to come clean her house, or nurse her.
Speaker 2:Maybe she didn't realize that was something she could do Only because the book made it seem like she barely spoke. Maybe I read into that wrong, Because they said something like oh, she does speak.
Speaker 2:So you thought maybe she was mentally unwell as well as yes, that's what I was thinking, because I'm gonna have so many, all those cats all those cats into a point where, like it made her sick and they had to give them away like unconscious on the floor, cats are all crawling on her and I was like this is horrifying because cats eat dead people like people that die in their homes, that have like a lot of cats like they will like eat them.
Speaker 1:Dogs will do that too.
Speaker 4:Yes, they will Well, especially if they're starving, and they keep saying that the cats have like not been getting fed, and I mean to be honest, I'll just go on record saying if I'm dead and my cats are hungry, I'm not going to hold it against them.
Speaker 3:In the afterlife.
Speaker 4:Side note not gonna hold it against her in the afterlife wait.
Speaker 3:That should be the soundbite but why?
Speaker 4:if she had the money? Why her cat's starving I?
Speaker 1:have maybe you're right how with it? Like she just wasn't mentally, but then, like that makes hyrum super sketchy to marry her I mean yeah like, can she even consent to that? Is she a vulnerable adult?
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Maybe the grandma was making points Because they were like, how could you say that he poisoned her? And it's like, well, maybe.
Speaker 4:Maybe Shouldn't she be mad that he gave away all of her cats and nearly drowned them, unless he didn't share the piece where he nearly drowned them I don't know piece where he nearly drowned.
Speaker 3:I don't know what's going on with him it's characters like him that I I it started to like or I started to think about how I wouldn't have gotten much out of it as a kid but like, or even in my teens.
Speaker 3:But I would like now as an adult, because it's a lot of older people reflecting on their past lives and then informing, like I think you know, like trying to give that wisdom to like Sarah Louise.
Speaker 3:Right, it's like the mom does that, hiram does that, the grandma does that, and and even then she herself like she gets it kind of like it does propel her to go on into the next step in her life. But again, she needs to experience life to then reflect back on it and say like, oh, like, well, I don't know if she like fully understands, just kind of how full circle things came in, that she can now like truly understand her mother's perspective. But the book does that for us and again it's kind of like, are you ready for those life lessons as a teen, when you don't have any sort of experience to like make meaning of of that advice? You know, like, looking back, that you're like, oh yeah, that makes sense, that they would say you know to not waste away your years and like to do what it is that you love, like we had never really held you back. This was just yourself and your own doubts that seemed like gaslighting to me.
Speaker 1:I know she did kind of say like oh, it was just my fears that were holding me back. But no, it wasn't. They were like I feel like Sarah Louise was constantly getting just I mean, I don't know From the grandmother I feel like it was emotional abuse at some point From her sister. No, but she was like just constantly getting talked down to or made fun of or told that she was less than Caroline or that what she was wasn't good enough or it didn't fit the norms, which I do think we should talk about gender roles for sure. But you know, the reason she was being held back was because people were treating her pretty shabbily a lot and like her mom never really stands up for her in any of these you know little vignettes that were shown where sort of Caroline and the grandmother are going at her.
Speaker 1:Like the mom will just say like oh, thanks for the money. Or like she's very passive about how she corrects that, and like to the point that I would say she's not correcting. And like Sarah's wanting that so bad she never defends. And I that that would definitely over time get into your head. I think, like you're just constantly receiving messages that you aren't as worthy. So like why would she have had any feeling that she had the ability to go? Like her only value to her family seems to be the money she's bringing in, and then her ability to work on the boat when, when she's a little bit older, with her dad, and that's tough, like I mean, maybe they just didn't know how to like express their love appropriately.
Speaker 1:But they don't make even like attempts to explain the situation to her. It's just kind of like get over it Caroline's frail, Get over it Caroline's beautiful. Get over it, she's talented and you're not any of those things you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I do agree that when I was reading it there was a bit of like anger on Sarah Louise's behalf, which I don't even know that she expressed that anger in the book. It was not like mine. I was angry for her when Hiram was like, well, that's because we always knew you could do it. And it was like what would make you believe that, out of all the experiences that she's had where you basically paid for someone else's schooling like you, you know, like everyone always like doted on her like what would make you think that sarah louise understood that you guys just took her to be the stronger twin or that you know that, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like why don't they get that? That's a burden that they've put on her. Like it is hard to be the person that's you know, this stable, solid, reliable person, and that's your identity.
Speaker 2:Because you want somebody to worry about you too.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's all she wants. She said that at one point They've put this weight on her where she feels like her only value is as a wage earner. And then they're like surprised that that felt like a millstone around her neck. And then they're like surprised that that felt like a millstone around her neck and it's like, well, y'all reinforced that every step of the way and created that identity for her Like there's no way she created that identity for herself when she was like five. You know, it's just years and years of being a. Well, we don't have to worry about Sarah Louise, because she's not sick and she's not. You know, she's not sick and she's not.
Speaker 3:You know, yeah, you know. I think the mother could tell right that Sarah Louise was feeling slighted by the fact that Hiram was going to pay for Carolyn to like leave, and I think she had always known that Sarah Louise also wants to go to boarding school and she was like, oh, you know, like well, we can like try to save money and send you. And then you know, sarah Louise says back like don't worry about it, and it's like really upset about it.
Speaker 1:But again, she's an afterthought right, right, it's too little, too late.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like she's. Not only is she an afterthought, but it's like they gave in too quickly. It's like you know that that's something she would probably like, but you didn't fight her on it because I a part of you did want her to stay. Yeah, right, and so then you're kind of continuing to like feed into this idea that she really needs to stay.
Speaker 1:It is a pretty bleak book. I mean, yes, by the end I think Sarah Louise has made a life for herself and carved out an identity, but you know, her relationship with her sister is still not good. Her dad dies, the grandmother dies, so good riddance Like her mom is going to come live with them. And so now is she right back into having that weight of that identity as the caregiver again back on her.
Speaker 2:And then they the mom. Instead of before the mom comes to live with them, they go to see Caroline in her show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Instead of being there for the birth which I feel like was also just a jerk move on the part of the mom, Like what are you doing? She will have other shows. You only give birth, which might kill you once. And she knows that, like the husband is going to have to deliver the baby because Sarah Louise is the only midwife, like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I yeah, you did all that putting my sister before me, but at the end of the day, in your last year, it's like I'm the one that's stuck taking care of you yeah, and the same thing with the dad like.
Speaker 3:She says like it sucks that caroline is the one that gets to be there. When I was the one that was of actual like more help to him than you know Caroline ever was. Yeah, and then also another really interesting thing about the kind of gender roles in this book is, right, hands are really important, and so there's a way that they talk about masculine hands and there's a way that they talk about feminine hands and like maybe they're like more nurturing versus like really calloused. And I just thought it was interesting that Sarah Louise at some point is so obsessed with hands that she like buys Juergen hand lotion and like cuticle remover. I forgot what it was like.
Speaker 1:Everything to like, basically make your nail polish, just to make your hands look beautiful.
Speaker 3:And then Caroline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, caroline like kind of ruins that for her, because caroline's always ruining stuff with her hands, because she's the one at the beginning of the book. That's like ew, your nails are dirty, like after she brings in money and like stuff to eat and it's like okay, but girl, that's the reason we're gonna have like a better dinner tonight and she says that to her, right she.
Speaker 2:but doesn't she say something to her along the lines of like, yeah, I'm paying for you to go to school, essentially like to go off on the main line?
Speaker 1:Yeah, she says she does bring it up sometimes with Caroline that like, hey, you know you couldn't do any of this stuff if it wasn't for me, but it still.
Speaker 2:She's like am I going? I guess she like threw the I guess it was a glass bottle of jergens, so like she threw it at the wall or something. And then she's like, am I going crazy? But luckily we kept this between the two of us.
Speaker 4:I was like no, louise, you're just being an angry teenager.
Speaker 3:But it's the way that caroline's like. I didn't think you would mind. It's like caroline, please.
Speaker 1:I know you know that she would oh, she 100 percent did that on purpose can I have something to myself, twins don't
Speaker 4:have to share everything you don't go into people's underwear except except our boyfriend I guess, like how hard would it have been to be like hey, can I borrow some of your lotion? Like that would have been. I think that would have changed the equation.
Speaker 3:And Carolyn doesn't need, it, okay, she does have.
Speaker 1:Her hands are described. The time that I can't remember why Sarah Louise broke down this time, but the one time where she breaks down and Caroline's like sort of trying to comfort her.
Speaker 1:She talks about like that Caroline's hands are so strong. From that her like she says something like her really strong fingers or something from playing the piano. So she does sort of have, at least the one time, I think there's like a bit of a nod that like okay, caroline's hands are masculine, just in a different way. It's strength rather than dirt. You know, there's still beauty and strength. There's nothing beautiful about you're dirty, right, I it. Just I just feel so bad for her and her self-esteem. Like she's very angry and I understand why she's so angry. She wants to be capable she wants to be appreciated.
Speaker 4:She wants to be capable. She wants to be appreciated. She wants to be beautiful Like. These are all very understandable human impulses.
Speaker 3:Which I think kind of makes it even more interesting, kind of where she lands, because I think she's considered a beauty in that town as well, because I think the father's she was like a negative five on her ass.
Speaker 4:She was like a 12 and a little truant.
Speaker 3:You gotta move to the right town, because they would all be really awkward around her and couldn't really look her in the eyes, but also they were just in desperate need of her, and so she was very well lauded and appreciated for what she did, because no one else really could do that in that town. Saving the babies, saving the cats.
Speaker 4:Did y'all think they did?
Speaker 1:enough to set up why Sarah Louise would want to be a doctor Because I was kind of struggling with that because, if anything, I would have thought that that would have seemed abhorrent to her, because the doctors were so much a part of the attention that Caroline gets and everyone's always fretting medically for Caroline. It just didn't seem to me like that would have been the dream she would have, unless, I don't know, unless she felt like that gave her power in some way. I thought the plot was pasted on.
Speaker 2:The first time she mentions anything about wanting to be a doctor or having any interest in anything is 87% of the way through the book. I highlighted it because I was just like where is this coming from?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that to me came out of left field and then I mean it sure made sense once she's a midwife, you know. Again back to the hands thing that Darlene's bringing up. You know her hands are how she's caregiving for her family initially, like her hands are what are making her a good sailor and a good waterman. And then her hands are how she's caring for her new community. They talk about her delivering the calf and delivering the babies and like Ben Carson, gifted hands, but you know, I think there maybe is something there with the hands through line.
Speaker 1:I just didn't get that. Like she was set up to be a healer and like being a caregiver is kind of different than being a healer. And then it was like, oh no, I was so disappointed, I have to go be a nurse because I just always wanted to be a doctor. Did you, did you? Yeah, like that doesn't come up.
Speaker 2:Because, like, even like with you know, like, honestly, I had no thoughts or ideas of her even wanting to go to college, because, like she wanted to be on the water, she wanted to be on the water Like she did not care to go to school. It wasn't. It didn't seem like it was a conflict for her of like, oh, I want to go to school, but I also want she could be sad about that, but it still didn't feel like a I want this education, I want this information, but I'm conflicted because there aren't people there. It was just like you know, I don't want to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was one of the only things in the book where I really just felt like she didn't do the groundwork for it, because I do think this is a pretty nuanced book for the age that it's targeting. Like there's a lot going on on this like emotional front in the book, but that one just didn't. I don't know. I feel like maybe a scene got edited out early that would have.
Speaker 4:She laid more groundwork to become a marine biologist.
Speaker 1:With all the yeah, I don't know, maybe like doctor was just the most prestigious smell.
Speaker 1:This one maybe um should we talk a little bit more about the gender roles and sexism in the book, because it seems like that comes into play from like the very beginning, where she's talking about like that maybe she would have been more valued if she had been a boy, because then she would have been able to help on the boat without people, you know, looking askance at the family, and she would have been able to, you know, have that role in the family rather than being just the less pretty sister and the less gifted sister and the twin that's in the shadow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that that was really strong aspect of the book, that she felt that way, because it wouldn't matter that Caroline was like more fragile or anything like that. He, you know, as a, he would have his own place in the family and be valued for strength, right and like the physical attributes that she's bringing to the boat, yeah, and I feel like even more so, like they would have been a bit more external about their appreciation for those qualities that they're saying they always valued in Sarah Louise.
Speaker 1:But it's like how valued could they have been if she didn't know that you were valuing them until, like yeah, and the grandmother would have left her alone too, because so much of the grandmother's like harping on things is related to, you know, slut shaming and like Whoredom yeah, whoredom. We can talk about religion too. It's real important in this book, um I.
Speaker 3:I had to look that up as well. When I looked up the plot summary, I think I had read a little bit about the title, because I read through the plot summary I was like there is no jacob, that she loved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an allusion to the Bible, right. The favorite son versus the non-favored son and the conflict between them.
Speaker 2:I love when I finally catch to where the title is referenced in the book, so I highlighted it.
Speaker 1:Where the grandmother says it yeah, and she's being such a jerk, isn't she like following around going like Jacob, have I loved. Like just repeatedly, which is like what is wrong with that woman?
Speaker 4:She needs the television and some shows to watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's just awful and it was weird too.
Speaker 1:I mean I think again it was like a sign of the grandmother's decline, but she's more accepting of the mom earlier in the book and then by the end she is just like she's within the bounds of normal behavior, closer to it, exactly, and then she is just totally deranged by the end she is just like she's within the bounds of normal behavior or closer to it, and then she is just totally deranged by the end, like she's literally following this woman around, just calling her a whore all day, which is she's trying to bake bread, or Really horrifying behavior, and I'm still just mad at the dad for like, grow a spine, dude, stick up for your wife, stick up for your kid. He does nothing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I didn't like him. There's a lot of weird stuff in the Bible about twins Like actually it's not just them. And she makes a reference to Cain in the book too right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, she thinks she's like Cain, because I think she has a dream about killing her sister.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was pretty intense too for a book that's really written for like a nine-year-old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it was just like, if you don't know what this is referencing like, depending on when this came out, I mean, I guess you would just be expected to. She beats her to death in the dream, yeah.
Speaker 4:I guess you would just be kind of expected to just go and flip a Bible open and like do the reference, like hey, hey.
Speaker 2:What is this verse about? Like um, also, towards the end she helps someone who gives birth to twins and I think the the second child was like weaker and like she ended up breastfeeding the child yeah which I felt like I didn't catch on to that until you read the summary, but like I feel like that was a really like strong way to end the book.
Speaker 2:Almost like she felt like she herself was not considered the weaker twin, but like the maybe like because if you think about it technically, if there was a quote unquote weaker twin it might be her sister, because they figured she was fragile. But I feel like she kind of took on the role of like caring for the twin who may end up becoming more, not neglected, but like yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:I mean I read that is she inverted the situation that happened to her. Yes, she got fed formula and put in a basket with grandma as caregiver, because everything was given to caroline who was breastfed sarah louise was fed on formula instead of breast milk.
Speaker 1:Right, she had like the tinned milk, because all of the resources were put into the one child, and so she took the healthy child and gave that child to the mom. Yeah, like that's the kid that needs you, I'll take care of this one that has the medical issues. Yes, and I don't know that that fixes the situation. She just set up a different conflict than what she had had.
Speaker 4:Also, you can't do that now because breast milk can carry pathogens. But it was the 40s, I guess, or maybe the 50s at this point.
Speaker 1:People still do that now. I mean, there was a whole thing with Salma Hayek, the whole scandal when she nursed the refugee child at a camp that she was visiting. Oh, really, yeah, and a lot of doctors chimed in to say like no, that was the appropriate choice. That child needed to eat and it was worth the risk to do that.
Speaker 4:I guess, if the choice is starving or not, that's better. But I mean yeah, and we?
Speaker 1:don't. I mean, we don't wet nurse kids anymore in this country, but there are milk banks.
Speaker 4:You know like there is still this idea that I'm sure they screen to make sure that, yes, they do, but back then they wouldn't have. Yeah, there was fewer pathogens to be concerned about that were in circulation at that point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think they just didn't know do we know these twins were both boys because they just kept talking about the weaker twin, but they said he specifically for the stronger.
Speaker 1:I thought it was a he and she. Again I thought it was fraternal twins.
Speaker 2:Again, right okay you know fraternal twins don't get much love in stories. So you know, shout out to us.
Speaker 1:Did we want to talk about poverty? I do think that there's a pretty yeah outside of like maybe Tree Grows in Brooklyn and like Hole of Thunder, hear my Cry. This seemed to have the most nuanced look at like systemic factors of poverty and like the cycles that poverty can create, which I again I thought was really interesting. Like reading it as an adult, I think it really stands up just fine as like an adult book in a lot of ways. It's just that the characters are young. What did y'all think about sort of the through line of poverty running through the book?
Speaker 4:Well, I just this is not very deep, but I'm thinking, man inflation.
Speaker 2:It's really a thing. You'd a week off, the families that could do. Uh, one thing that I thought was interesting I don't really know if this was, that's not really a deep thought, but I just thought it was interesting how, like, as, like you know, they went through the great, as I went through the depression, and they went through like times where people just didn't have as much money, and they talked about families moving from the island to the mainland. That was something that I really thought was interesting because it kind of, I guess, like the, the, the water, wasn't, you know, providing for them as much as they needed it to. So that was because, you know, initially I didn't, I guess I didn't initially realize that like this was an island of people who were living, mostly living in poverty. But that might just might have just been because, like they were relegated to this small island and I guess, if everybody's almost living in that way, you don't really see it as much as opposed to like they're being arranged, I guess, if that makes sense, I don't know.
Speaker 2:And something also that I thought about is, like you know, when call came back from the navy, he was explaining to um, he's explaining to sarah louise. Like you know, this island is basically like washing away, like there's a, like an acre or more missing from the last time that I was here. Like, do you not see that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the erosion thing is really interesting. I mean I think she really did her research when she wrote this, because that is still I mean it's a major threat to Smith Island. Like they're trying to dredge now to like reestablish wetlands and stuff, because the island's going to be gone by like 2050 if they don't do something. But she remarks on Hiram's property early in the book that when they first built that house they had all of this usable land and now it's marshland.
Speaker 2:He keeps talking about how he used to have a cow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like the only cow on the island you know, All right.
Speaker 2:So let's get into a little bit of a quiz. Shout out to BuzzFeed for this one. Let's get carcinized. What type of, what kind of crab are you? Carcinization is inevitable. We will all become crabs. Okay. So first, where do you want to spend the rest of your life?
Speaker 3:I think I'm gonna go with a picture where it's like half land, half water I'm probably gonna go with the one on the bottom right.
Speaker 2:it looks like a coral reef, a coral reef, a coral reef. Yeah, you know it's pretty.
Speaker 4:The dark, colorful one.
Speaker 2:Yes, the dark, colorful one.
Speaker 4:I'm picking that one too.
Speaker 1:It looks neat I think I'm going to go with the like very aqua-looking one that's completely underwater.
Speaker 3:That's pretty. Yeah, it's pretty, it has like Caribbean vibes.
Speaker 1:To me Looks like there would be a good beach there, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right. So which part of your body are you most proud of? Legs, claws, eyes, shell, arms, tail? Question mark.
Speaker 4:Question mark.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say legs. I'm nice say legs.
Speaker 3:I'm nice and tall I have to go with claws Just because, just because.
Speaker 1:Honka with eyes. I guess I'll go with legs, because I feel like.
Speaker 2:That's where my power is. How much do you like to stand out? I know I'm cute, but I want to hide sometimes. Please don't talk to me or my son ever again I'm a living internet meme I'm a rock, thanks. Everyone wants a piece of me, or it doesn't hurt to be pretty if you have a bodyguard I have a question, but a last choice. I'm a rock. Thanks.
Speaker 3:I'll go with.
Speaker 2:I know I'm cute, but I want to hide sometimes.
Speaker 3:Me, but most of the time.
Speaker 1:Right, I think the please don't talk to me or my son ever again is where my heart is.
Speaker 3:But I think I generally feel like everyone wants a piece of me, but that's not because I stand out, it's just my job.
Speaker 1:That's the Leo in you. I guess I'll go with that one that feels like it's more present in my life that like I have to deal with everybody.
Speaker 4:Please don't talk to me or my son Mothman ever again, or my son Mothman ever again.
Speaker 2:Now let's grab some grubs, Bugs, dry and crunchy, Algae, soft and wet Clams. I like my food hard to get, Carcass rotten like my soul, Mmm plankton. Worms, worms, worms and fish, I guess.
Speaker 1:I'll go with clams. I love clams, mmm.
Speaker 3:But do I like my food hard to get?
Speaker 2:That was the thing. Yeah, no, Mmm plankton.
Speaker 3:That seems to be enjoying it.
Speaker 4:I will go with bugs, dry and crunchy Carcass rotten like my soul. It won't be hard to get. It's not going anywhere going anywhere.
Speaker 2:Being a crab is tough. How do you deal with your enemies? Can't catch me. If they can't see me, hire a bodyguard. I pinch with like emoji face I am the night, I am darkness. Lol, eat me if you can. I have enemies. Personally, I'm torn between lol, eat me if you can, or I have enemies. Personally, I'm torn between LOL, eat me if you can, or I have enemies. But I'm going to go with LOL, eat me if you can.
Speaker 3:Same with me I'm actually going to go with.
Speaker 2:I have enemies Because why would anybody be your enemy? Have you met Darlene?
Speaker 4:I pinch.
Speaker 3:Of course, it's the emoji that sells the answer Exactly.
Speaker 2:Lastly, what motivates you to become a crab Claws duh? Terrestrial bipedality was a mistake. Crab crab, crab, crab, crab, crab, crab crab Crabs are cute. I guess, darling, it's better down where it's wetter.
Speaker 1:I like the quiet life that should have been in your Sebastian voice.
Speaker 3:That should have been a weird Jamaican accent, caribbean accent.
Speaker 2:I did not have one of those, y'all, I'm sorry. Oh, I see the vision. Now I see the vision. Oh, like under the sea. Under the sea, y'all. That's the one, darling. It's better down where it's wetter. I'm going S-y, y'all. That's the one, darling. It's better down where it's wetter.
Speaker 1:I'm going with. Terrestrial bipedality was a mistake. I prefer being in the water to being on land.
Speaker 4:I'm also going with that one, because it definitely was a mistake.
Speaker 3:I'll go with. Crabs are cute, I guess.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm an Atlantic horseshoe crab. Okay, you have become an Atlantic horseshoe crab. Okay, you have become the Atlantic horseshoe crab. Limulus polyphemus. You're not even a crustacean, but what matters the most is in your heart, right Like that bright blue blood which protects you from diseases. Plus, you're heckin' cute.
Speaker 2:Did you get a name Like yours, so mine says Reginald.
Speaker 1:I didn't get a name, so mine says Reginald. I didn't get a name, I just got Atlantic Horseshoe.
Speaker 2:Crab. You have become Reginald, the Japanese Spider Crab. You are the biggest, greatest of them all. You are feared and admired by many. You are the crab. But, remember you're only here on alternating Tuesdays.
Speaker 1:And that's the picture of oh my gosh, that's horrifying. It's Reginald.
Speaker 4:I am also.
Speaker 3:Reginald.
Speaker 4:Spider crab.
Speaker 3:They really took that long legs comment that you made earlier. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's funny, though, because I feel like me and Hannah had like differing answers. We did.
Speaker 3:What'd you get, darlene? I got vampire crab. Ooh, you have become the vampire crab. You are beauty, you are grace, you are a purple crab with a pretty face, but your beauty is a curse. You better hide from the pesky apes or they will ship you on a plane flying half a planet away. What?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a very strange. I feel like that's a reference to something that I have not seen. Yeah, are they?
Speaker 4:real so real it's a species of small land living crabs found found on java, indonesia. That sounds like a lot all right.
Speaker 3:Each episode we ask whether our book passes the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test asks whether a work features two female characters who talk to each other about something that doesn't involve men or boys. So does it pass.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm not sure, yeah, yeah, her grandma screams about whoredom.
Speaker 3:Which in a way it's kind of like about men, right. But I mean I was going to say like the conversations with Carolyn sometimes are not about men, about the jargons yeah.
Speaker 4:Sisterly rivalry, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:A lot of their like hopes and aspirations.
Speaker 1:And she has the talk with her mom about like, where her mom says like we were never keeping you from leaving, and that's primarily about her sister and her relationship with her sister and grandmother and stuff well, that's it for this episode of these books made me join us next time when we'll discuss a book in which the main character channels ee cummings.
Speaker 2:If you think you know which book we're tackling next, check us out on our brand new instagram. Give us a follow. Follow, we're at thesebooksmademe and we'll be posting, I guess, our next read post, so look out for that and drop below what you think we're tackling.