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Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
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This thread is for comments about The Leaving Sweater, by Ruth Nestvold
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KNB
Regular reader
Reged: Oct 30 2006
Posts: 97
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There was a lovely simplicity to this story!
It was a nice counterpoint to "Gift of Flight."
There's a thematic similarity - leaving - but very different ways of treating it.
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Paula Stiles
New user
Reged: Apr 25 2007
Posts: 11
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I really liked the unusual setting and initial situation, with the ongoing theme of escaping from an impoverished and hopeless upbringing. I also liked the idea of the leaving sweater.
Unfortunately, the sweater didn't quite work as a central image for me and so the second half fell flat. Initially, the sweater is a positive symbol for the strength the protag needs to escape her hometown. But it then turns into a negative symbol of her inability to put down roots and her tendency to use the geographic cure for every sticky romantic situation. She then does sort of settle down--by getting into an ugly and abusive relationship that persists until she escapes by making another sweater. The problem is: how is this new escape better than the previous rootlessness that made her dissatisfied enough to fall into an abusive situation in the first place? The failure to answer this question makes it feel as though the protag hasn't learned about any kind of happy medium from her experiences and will simply continue to repeat them. As such, I ended up not enjoying this one as much as I would have liked to. The ending just didn't feel as happy as the author was Telling me it was.
Edited by Paula Stiles (Fri Jul 27 2007 07:31 PM)
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KNB
Regular reader
Reged: Oct 30 2006
Posts: 97
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Quote:
The failure to answer this question makes it feel as though the protag hasn't learned about any kind of happy medium from her experiences and will simply continue to repeat them.
Hmm. I read the lesson differently: That there are no binary solutions. Leaving is neither always right nor always wrong, and destroying the sweater removed an option that she needed to keep.
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Paula Stiles
New user
Reged: Apr 25 2007
Posts: 11
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Well, I get that.
My problem with it was that there wasn't even a hint at the end that she had learned a better solution than either taking off whenever things got bad or settling into an abusive situation. She just decided to take off again. Well, great. But what happens when she gets tired of running and decides to settle down again? It's not like her choice in guys or settling-down situations is going to improve unless she actually addresses what's going in her head about that.
I could buy this if the ending had been presented more ambiguously. But the author presented it as unequivocally a happy ending when it felt like just more of the same without the protag really learning anything. Out of the frying pan, back into the fire.
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KNB
Regular reader
Reged: Oct 30 2006
Posts: 97
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Quote:
But what happens when she gets tired of running and decides to settle down again? It's not like her choice in guys or settling-down situations is going to improve unless she actually addresses what's going in her head about that.
I could buy this if the ending had been presented more ambiguously. But the author presented it as unequivocally a happy ending when it felt like just more of the same without the protag really learning anything. Out of the frying pan, back into the fire.
Haven't you known people like that? I think the only real difference between a happy and an unhappy ending is where you stop the story. We don't know that she learned nothing, and we don't know that she did. Maybe she'll be more careful who she chooses next time; maybe she'll get into another bad marriage; or maybe she will be completely scared off committing at all. All the possibilities remain, because she's left. Which is fine with me. Tomorrow is another day.
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