Chapter 7 Summary

Will continues reading from "Notes on What's What". He discovers a passage talking of the "me as I think I am" versus the "me as I am in fact". In this passage, the author writes that one third of all sorrow the person "that I think I am" must endure is unavoidable. Will then finds a poem written by Susila and folded into the book. The poem talks of remembering the dead as "gentians", a blue trumpet-shaped flower. Will's thoughts turn to his father who had belittled his mother's attempts at painting. When Susila returns, Will asks her about the poem and says that he can't imagine his own father as a gentian—only as a turd.

Will and Susila talk at length about childhood. Will's was unhappy because his parents were unhappy with each other. Susila says that her own parents...