PAAE: 24-56

Free write: How does absence register in our awareness? When we miss something or someone, how do we know that?

When Max notices his curiosity about Rose, it comes through the hot water he misses in his shower, from the outline of light cast from her window at night, from the empty chair at meals.

For your writing today, you have two choices. If you want, target this to your character for the scrapbook project. Imagine a journal entry in which your character is missing someone or something. By what means does your character measure what is not there? How is that someone or something known in its absence?

If you can’t imagine (at least right now) what or who your character would be missing, think about the phrase “the room was empty” and think of what an empty room contains that makes us know it as “empty”. Use all your senses. If you closed your eyes, for example, what would tell you about a room and it’s being empty?

Perhaps the room exercise will lead you later to something about your character.

More art: Matisse, Manet, & Degas

Pictures at an Exhibition Promenade, Gnome, The Old Castle

Discussion:
1. p. 41 — "When we stepped out into the light I became a man again, and we both let go." What has changed in the relationship between Max and his father? What did they both let go of?

2. p. 43 — "Or rather, that language for her was a necessity but not her preferred means of communication ... As an adolescent, this same kind of wish had led me to study Polish, secretly, for a few months in hopes that one day I would speak to my mother in a proud declarative sentence and she would answer me with joy and clarity." Max implies that there is some form of miscommunication going on between him and his mother. In what ways is the idea of miscommunication expressed in the novel thus far between Max/Daniel, Max/Rose, Rose/Daniel, Max/Eva, Eva/Daniel.