How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Let's see…" Lettie was talking as she led me through the fields. "You're wet through. We'll need to get you something to wear. I'll have a look in the chest of drawers in the green bedroom. I think Cousin Japeth left some of his clothes there when he went off to fight in the Mouse Wars. He wasn't much bigger than you." (8.126)
Do these Mouse Wars have anything to do with the mouse soldiers in The Nutcracker? Why haven't we heard about them? Was her cousin a mouse? What business did Japeth have fighting mice? So many questions…
Quote #5
"They're fine. Just a little snipping, then a little sewing and it'll all be good as gold." She reached down to the table, pointed to the scrap of faded dressing gown tartan resting upon it. "That's your dad and you in the hallway, and that's the bathtub. She's snipped that out. So without any of that, there's no reason for your daddy to be angry with you." I had not told them about the bathtub. I did not wonder how she knew. (9.54)
So now there are two versions of reality: The boy's, in which his father has tried to drown him in the bathtub, and the parents' version where they drove late at night to the house down the road because their son had forgotten his toothbrush for the sleepover.
Quote #6
There was still a monster in my house, and, in a fragment of time that had, perhaps, been snipped out of reality, my father had pushed me down into the water of the bath and tried, perhaps, to drown me. (9.146)
But has it been snipped from reality? He still experienced it, so it's still a part of his reality, is it not? Does reality have to be validated by others for it to be legitimate? We're starting to get a little dizzy.