Uncomfortable endings

I finished Lee Maracle's "First Wives Club" this week.  I wrote about this book earlier.  I am puzzled by the end of the book.  Most of the stories appear to be the voice of a woman in middle years, but the last two stories are young male voices speaking to this woman in her absence.  They are uncomfortable stories of the death of a mother.  I am not sure how I feel about this ending.  I suppose it made me think about things more closely and see the book as a narrative rather than just a series of stories.




A few final quotes spoke to me

• "The goal of every adult among us is to face ourselves, our greatest enemy..." page 24
• "Bias is not a reasonable thing.  It is emotional, conjured by those whose own life is rich with doubt and pain they have no idea what to do with, so they pass it on to those that society has deemed lesser beings.  It is a kind of crazy social contract that the colonized have unconsciously agreed to."  Page 61
• "Neither of them is culturally intact." (page 61)  What an evocative phrase.
• "It takes courage for millions to swim against the tide and the full length of an entire river, to scale series after series of falls for creation, knowing that death waits.  The gifts is not made for us but for the future.  It is not a fight against anything or anyone but rather a fight for creation.  We know creation itself is the only winner and we are satisfies, content with this knowledge." Page 63