But it grows on you

About a third of the way through Amy and Isabelle and, I have to say, it does grow on you (me). In yesterday's post I described Strout's world as "bad things happen to dull people," but they're not really dull (well, maybe a little), it's really more: Bad things happen to sad people. Her world is full of darkness and sorrow, and there are these scary things happening on the periphery: a teenage pregnancy in the first chapter, a kidnapping of a 12-year-old, now a series of break-ins/robberies. They haven't touched the lives of the central characters, yet, and maybe they won't, but they define the nature of the world they live in. It's also always cold, freezing snow, early sunset - it's Maine in winter. And always the enclosed sense of a small, provincial town where the great yearnings are for a trip to Boston for shopping or a hair-salon (the dentist's wife can afford this), which Isabelle thinks about with envy. It's a bit heavy handed that she's reading Madame Bovary, isn't it? (Also not credible that she's not well educated and picks up Hamlet and zeros in on most of the key passages.) Isabelle is the particularly sad character, and her lineaments are not yet clear - much less appears to be happening in her life, other than her struggles with her "moody" daughter, Amy, and her unrequited crush on her boss, the mill manager, Avery, one of the haves in the town. More focus, so far, on Amy, and the plot settling into her (parallel) crush on her math teacher. His behavior is totally inappropriate, obviously foucusing on a vulnerable, shy, powerless, outsider girl - and we'll see how far he gets and what consequences he will face.