(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: _Home Fires_, 1982 roundtable

Marc Aramini marcaramini at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 5 11:48:04 PDT 2013


Chelle recognizes her mother in another body but does not recognize skip, claiming it is just age. But is it?

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 5, 2013, at 11:33 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:

> But there is some subtext that it is not him at all.  He says he never gives to beggars, then after the first chapter he always gives to beggars.  His opening statement about waking up and having faith you are the same man you went to sleep as, and then counting the individuals at the ritual as seven, might hint that there is someone brave supplementing his personality.  He says he learned to fight in law school tongue in cheek when suddenly he takes out a policeman.   Also, just for what it is worth, the man with the beard who is later said to be chelles father first shows up in chapter four sitting next to skip unnamed and unrecognized, saying the os would destroy the earth if it guaranteed victory everywhere else. So Blue was always on the ship. 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Jun 5, 2013, at 10:53 AM, DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> This is a perceptive summary of a plot that did not seem so plain on first reading:
>> 
>> . . . The important thing here is that Chelle is at risk and Skip morphs into an adventure hero to save her, at one point leaping over a railing, firing a submachine gun into a group of hijackers. This behavior surprises him, but it gratifies him too because it changes his image of himself.
>> 
>> Between the third-person point of view, Wolfe intersperses Skip’s (and later Chelle’s) first-person meditations. From the first page, Skip has worried that he is an old man. Chelle’s original plan was that she would return to a rich contracto, and he would get a beautiful young contracta. The plan has worked but isn’t satisfying either of them. Skip is wealthy, but Chelle is uncomfortable about how he makes his money. Chelle is still beautiful to Skip, but she sees herself as damaged. Because she has the thoughts and impulses of another woman, she also worries that she is mentally ill. . . .
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