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“I’m ready," my sister said.
At fourteen my sister sailed away from me into a place I'd never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.
Losing one’s virginity is, for many, an important step in the process of maturation. In this passage from the end of Chapter 10, Lindsey decides she is prepared to take this step. She is able to give her consent and, because she and Samuel love one another, the experience opens onto new vistas, as the reference to “windows” suggests. Still, the passage centers Susie, who identifies Lindsey as “my sister” and stresses the difference this introduces between them. Because of the violence of her rape and murder, sex is a horror for her. Harvey even commands her to say she loves him, another perversion of true intimacy. Representing intimacy as a place, Susie’s description suggests jealously that she will never be able to visit it. In the end, Susie is only able to withdraw more completely from Earth after she has had sex with Ray Singh, where she inhabits, if briefly, a space of sexual love.
“You are so special to me, little man," my father said, clinging to him.
Buckley drew back and stared at my father's creased face, the fine bright spots of tears at the corners of his eyes. He nodded seriously and kissed my father's cheek. Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult.
Although this is a novel about heaven, it makes very few references to religion, either directly (by talking about a particular set of beliefs) or generally (by using the language of faith). The reference to the “divine” in this passage is an important exception. Even though Buckley is a young child, he is the person in this scene who most provides care. Throughout the novel, Buckley often nurtures his father, maturing in this way well before his time. Buckley’s loving act of caring for his father, even though he is the child in greater need of nurturing, signifies the “divine.” Here, the divine comes from Earth and not from heaven. This suggests that what is most sacred about the human experience occurs while people are still alive. In moments of kindness and compassion, especially those that are unexpected or unusual, people come closest to divinity.
He had had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.
As an adult, George Harvey is the novel’s antagonist, but Susie’s heavenly omniscience provides access to his childhood experiences. This passage, from Chapter 15, provides an explanation, though not a justification, for the monster he will grow to become. Witnessing what his mother must do to avoid rape, he concludes that he must never be weak, like women or children. His perverted “clarity” encourages him to identify with the men who threaten them, rather than with his mother’s efforts to keep them both safe. For Harvey, as for the Salmon children, what happens to them in childhood profoundly shapes who they become as adults. The inclusion of Harvey’s childhood, particularly the values that shaped who he became, adds an important dimension to the novel’s representation of maturation. This information helps to clarify Susie’s earlier observation that murderers are men, not monsters.
