Word: motheral
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most important concepts in the novel as it traces the course of the letter's dissemination. The letter becomes truly a letter left "to me," instead of "for me," as control over it passes from the protagonist's hands. When the book opens, the boy's mother has just handed the boy the letter, and immediately he is caught up in its contents and its history...
McElroy shows the boy's vacillations about the sending of the letter with credibility and sensitivity. Although the boy attempts to be understanding about his mother's and grandparents' decision to share the document, he is never certain what gives his family the right to examine and discuss this relic of his father's that he feeels was meant to speak directly...
Because it is the only meaningful talisman remaining to him after his father's death, every detail of its history becomes sacred. He constantly tries to recreate the letter's origins, to determine whether his mother knew about its existence before he found her with it, and to trace its journey from the safe where it was first kept to the desk drawer where it was after his father's death. He says, "I did not see my mother actually find the letter. Come across it; locate it. I'm building backwards again." Toward the end of the novel...
...relationship with his father. Part of him wishes to see it as a work of love: "If the letter is attention given to me, sending it out in all these copies is proof, or is giving my attention to those on the list," he says, trying to rationalize his mother's decision to share the letter...
...Noam D. Elkies' earliest memories is climbing onto his mother's piano bench to practice counting the black and white keys and experiment with sounds...