nepenthe | U: the Read-Along, Chapter Five

Last night, I had a dream that an evil alien tar-blob came to Earth with the intent to become our Evil Overlord. Upon arrival, the Arizonan crowd booed and a nice law-enforcement type person explained that there was a permit form for that sort of thing and if the tar-blob wanted, he could apply to rent an hefty acreage same as any of the other thousand Earth Overlord wannabes. He directed the tar-blob to Lieutenant Grover (yes, our blue Muppet friend) to show the tar-blob the ropes.

Hi.Jinx.

On to the read-along! We being Chapter 5 with the heading style #2.

Our intrepid detective’s second stop is the Michael Plot Puppet’s address; a yellow house with royal blue located on the not-so-nice side of town near the 101 (the 101 runs through the imaginary Santa Teresa? Gotcha). Kinsey is surprised Michael wasn’t guaranteed a bountiful income when he had bountiful education and opportunity. He dropped out, Kinsey. He’s unemployed, living off unemployment. A privet school high school diploma is still a high school diploma. Why are you surprised?

When the Michael Plot Puppet opens the door, he’s wearing the same clothes she saw him in the day before. There’s a trashy, thin, drunk girl lying on the couch. I call heroin addict.

O, a former heroin addict. Excuse me.

The boy Michael had once had a play-date with is identified from the classroom line-up Kinsey provides and she’s off to check the phone directories of the era to look up which house was the boy’s parents’. At the library, she finds the newspaper articles on the kidnapped little girl in question. The photos of the girl strike Kinsey most; through the haze of black and white print, the girl gazes into her soul.

Ugh. Now Kinsey engages in a flight of fancy to relay the events of the kidnapping, complete with the mother of the kidnapped emotional state: “She went through the gate still calling Mary Claire’s name, more alarmed as every minutes passed”. Or more like Sue is sloppy author who slips from Kinsey’s perspective to the mother’s.

“Mary Claire Fitzhugh had been swept into the Inky Void. . .”

Inky Void? Is this a proper noun sort of place?

Again and again, Kinsey is relaying information to us which her character doesn't have access to. She might imagine Mary Claire's mother's panic and fear, but the scene is described in first person, as though Sue doesn't know how to filter the scene through Kinsey's perspective without accidentally giving Kinsey authorial omniscience.

Thanks for joining me for Chapter 5. We’ve made it to page 50! My aunt would be pleased by this book for being nicely paced to read before bed.