Summary

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Claudia and her daughter Lisa. Lisa has already been described as homely and entirely unlike either of her parents in temperament or intelligence. In this chapter the reader gets Claudia’s perspective followed by Lisa’s perspective on the nature of their failed relationship.

The chapter opens with Claudia in the nursing home, struggling to remember the word for curtain. After being reminded of the word by a nurse, Claudia ponders the historical nature of language. Our words, she says, preserve centuries of linguistic history. English, for example, contains within it traces of Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Norse. These traces emerge in the speech of ordinary people in ordinary places; they are heard on the bus, on the radio, in the supermarket. Claudia marvels at the complexity of language. Her awe gives her a capacity to appreciate Lisa as a...