The image of a foghorn further contributes to the novel's motifs of danger and the unknown, specifically in regards to water. The term is most often used in relation to marine transport. "Lydia felt the ache of it all, deep and piercing as a foghorn."Ī foghorn or fog signal is a device that uses sound to warn vehicles of navigational hazards like rocky coastlines, or boats of the presence of other vessels, in foggy conditions. She is prompted to return to her fascination with the medical world, which eventually inspires her to abandon home and continue pursuing her degree. However, among the disorganized chaos, the precision of her cut fascinates and calms her. Marilyn's fall symbolizes the fact that her life is crashing down around her.
"She had cut herself on the glass: a deep gash right across the center of her palm, straight as a ruler's edge."Īfter Marilyn falls on her way to her car, she is forced to assess the damage around her. Marilyn wants Lydia to be perfect so that she can exhibit her as a "prize." Straight as a Ruler's Edge (Simile) Rather, Marilyn views Lydia as a blank canvas that she can paint with her own ideas and dreams. Ultimately, Lydia is not given the space or the freedom to grow into herself. However, the metaphor of Lydia as a rose indicates the ultimate selfishness of parenting. Marilyn vows to not be like her own mother, who pushed the idea of a domestic life down her throat. Agent: Julie Barer, Barer Literary."She would spend the rest of her years guiding Lydia, sheltering her, the way you tended a prize rose: helping it grow, propping it with stakes, arching each stem toward perfection." Ng’s prose is precise and sensitive, her characters richly drawn.
Lydia is remarkably imagined, her unhappy teenage life crafted without an ounce of cliché.
As the police try to decipher the mystery of Lydia’s death, her family realize that they didn’t know her at all. When Lydia is discovered dead in a nearby lake, the family begins to fall apart. Then Marilyn abruptly moves out of their suburban Ohio home to go back to school, only to return before long. The two fall in love and marry, over the objections of Marilyn’s mother, whose comment on their interracial relationship is succinct: “It’s not right.” Marilyn gets pregnant and gives up her dream of becoming a doctor, devoting her life instead to raising Lydia and the couple’s other two children, Nathan and Hannah. Marilyn and James meet in 1957, when she is a premed at Radcliffe and he, a graduate student, is teaching one of her classes. Lydia is the middle and favorite child of Marilyn Walker, a white Virginian, and James Lee, a first-generation Chinese-American. This emotionally involving debut novel explores themes of belonging using the story of the death of a teenage girl, Lydia, from a mixed-race family in 1970s Ohio.
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