<p>^^^ Not me. I’m not known for taking notes. (Admits shamefacedly … admiring all who do … yet having no intention of starting)</p>
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<p>I assume that it went along with his mother’s “blunt aphorisms” - same page, more or less:</p>
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<p>It paves the way for his suicide attempt.</p>
<p>By the way, I think Albert Vincent (undertaker/mayor) fathered Claire. When Claire (mother) tells Nozias she’s pregnant (he’d already noted that she did not rush to greet him and something was “weighing her down”), her face “was tied in an inexplicable knot as though she were fighting back tears.” She then talks to Nozias: “I told Msye Albert,” she said, “that I won’t be washing and dressing the dead anymore.” Also, this passage made me wonder: "[…]she’d been standing against the wall in the funeral parlor the afternoon he’d learned that she was pregnant. When he bent over and pressed his ear against her in the wash-and-dress room, she kept muttering, “Sa se pa nou. Se pa nou. This is ours. Ours. Ours. Ours.” Albert Vincent later sees that Claire is schooled. At one point, we note that Nozias resents Vincent stretching the term family to include Claire the mother.</p>
<p>That thought never occurred to me, but I think you might be right about Albert Vincent. And thanks whoever it was (too lazy to go back and look) that there really is a condition where you can end up with blood in your lungs when you were menstruating. </p>
<p>ignatius, that never occurred to me either! (I’m starting to wonder about all the things I miss in books that I read by myself in our alternate months. :-/ )</p>
<p>I just thought Msye Albert was a good man, doing his best to help out an employee’s family that had experienced a tragedy. But I’m sure you’re right. </p>
<p>Claire was eager for a child (Nozias “kept wishing he had known before she’d moved in with him how much having a baby meant to her”). And Albert was no doubt lonely, with his wife and children living in the United States. I’ll bet they struck a bargain, so that each could fill the void in their lives. I suppose Albert was a good man, in that he kept the secret and quietly helped support the child.</p>
<p>Albert as father of the baby + Albert as the undertaker is another example of the way life and death are intertwined.</p>
<p>Am I really the only one? I just picked up on the fact that Claire (mother) does not react with the expected joy when she finds she’s pregnant after trying for a year. It doesn’t mean I’m right, though.</p>
<p>Mary: You’re nicer than I am. I never thought that Claire (mother) and Albert struck a bargain. I assumed that Claire was not a willing participant … along the lines of Flore … coerced, perhaps. She seems upset/unhappy.</p>
<p>I think Albert feels guilt. He goes to Max Sr.'s house after the radio program denouncing Max Jr. His comment caught my eye: " ‘Of course, as Louise constantly reminds us, there are things we should never forget,’ Albert said, as though lecturing his friend."</p>
<p>(Gee, now I feel bad for assuming the worst of Albert Vincent. The way it’s viewed in Ville Rose is somewhat different though, as Max Sr. thinks: “Sleeping with the house servant was not an uncommon rite of passag for young men in houses like his. ‘Droit du seigneur,’ his own father had called it.”)</p>
<p>From an interview with Danticat:
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<p>By the way, I haven’t put page numbers because I ended up with a large print book from the library and my page numbers haven’t matched any of y’alls.</p>
<p>I just realized that I addressed question #11: Claire of the Sea Light is rich with secrets: of paternity, of sexual identity, of crimes, of lies that unfold in the course of the narrative. How do the multiple voices of the book help withhold the truth, yet also expose it at key moments? In what cases does not knowing the entire truth of a situation—such Nozias’s plan to have a vasectomy, Max Junior’s love for Bernard, and Albert Vincent’s for Claire Narcis—hurt or protect the person keeping the secret, and the person from whom the truth is kept?</p>
<p>Maybe it’s not Albert Vincent who feels guilt (I feel better) but rather Claire herself, loved by two men: her husband and her boss. I don’t necessarily think of it as an intentional bargain though. Claire’s reaction itself shows that something’s not right. </p>
<p>^^^ I also noted that Claire tells Albert Vincent about the pregnancy before she tells her husband (when she lets Albert Vincent know she will no longer come to the funeral parlor to prepare the dead for burial). Seems the natural order would be to let the father know first - particularly for a much-wanted (and delayed) pregnancy.</p>
<p>Well, I’m sold, but I don’t think the relationship was forced upon Claire, at least not in the Max-Flore way. Albert, as “a man of unmatched elegance,” might have been very persuasive, and I think Claire made the choice of her own free will, but was left guilt-stricken.</p>
<p>As long as we’re hitting the Albert discussion questions:</p>
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<p>I think the dual role again reinforces the life/death interconnectedness. Albert is the “mayor” of the dead as well as the living. Ville Rose residents joke about “the town eventually becoming a cemetery so he could get more clients” (p. 4). </p>
<p>In his relationship with Claire, his two positions make him both a person of sensitivity and compassion (the undertaker side) and a person of power and authority (the mayor side). Claire was probably drawn to the first and compelled by the second. What I mean is, I imagine that she found the warm part of his nature appealing, and once that attraction was in motion, it was difficult to refuse him because of the authoritative aspect of his nature.</p>
<p>We don’t get a story from Albert Vincent’s perspective, correct? I don’t remember one. I skimmed quickly and didn’t see one. We really don’t know him. We know his hands shake. Is that significant? It is mentioned often. I tried to find a reason the shaking could be associated with being an undertaker. I couldn’t. It could be Parkinson’s Disease or alcoholism. Another cause of tremors is mercury poisoning. That’s possible if the fish are contaminated. There must be a reason Danticat had Vincent’s hands shaking.</p>
<p>Albert Vincent becomes mayor on Claire’s sixth birthday. That’s not to say he’s not an authority figure for Claire the mother - he is her boss, after all. Still, she seems to respect him as such. I leaned toward coercion from his comments to Max Sr. re Louise reminding “there are things we should never forget.” It could just be that he understand he shouldn’t forget Ti Claire, as he calls her.</p>
<p>Nope, no story from Albert Vincent’s perspective. That would have been interesting, but the absence may be the author’s way of retaining some mystery about the characters and their relationships.</p>
<p>One reason for Albert’s shaking hands could be alcoholism. Granted, he’d be a high-functioning alcoholic, but it’s possible. This is why I think so: In the chapter “Ghosts,” Albert’s shaking hands are described, followed by the sentence: “Rumor had it that the shaking was the reason Albert’s wife was living near their fifteen-year-old twin son and daughter’s boarding school in Massachusetts, while he was running a funeral parlor that had been in their family now for four generations” (p. 87).</p>
<p>By the way, in the same chapter, we learn that Albert had “a gentle, melodious voice,” like “a singer of seductive boleros or love songs” (p. 89) – maybe a hint that he seduced Claire? Albert Vincent’s wife is 20 years younger than him, so it seems he has some appeal with the ladies.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it was Albert’s looks, personality, or money that attracted his young wife, but the fact that she lived out of the country likely plays into his desire for someone local.</p>
<p>^ agree Mary very nice discovery - subtle
“Rumor has it the " reason” …why the wife left. </p>
<p>Haiti such a poor country, no natural resources, so the four generation family business was " death". Follow the money, where there is money there is power. So it seems that the family in the business of death would wield the power in Haiti. ( side note related to power/ money- Supreme Court what were you thinking with your recent campaign contribution decision?) sorry I digress.</p>
<p>I read Breath,Eyes and Memory when it was released and, sadly, I don’t remember anything about that book,on the other hand, I’ll ever forget Haiti depicted in “mountains beyond mountains”. </p>
<p>Regarding Mary’s previous question about the possibility that Aldin sr may have been by the sea, I do believe Danticat portrayed Aldin sr, very distressed, mostly from public humiiation ,in addition,to learning about Max’s secret.</p>
<p>One of the “ugh” moments for me was when Gaellle told Nozias and Claire, that Claire must go with her that night, immediately, " now or never" !!! Really? So strange and unbelievable sentiment expressed at one of the most pivotal points in the book, Ugh.</p>
<p>Danticat’s portrayal of Gaelle, was not very positive. Clearly to make the reader feel the pain of Nozias’s decision. Had Gaelle been less flawed many of us might have thought, yes, this is the right thing for Claire, but Inshuddered to think that Claire would live with the awful woman.</p>
<p>^ Just want to add a P.S. that for Albert’s wife, the appeal was allegedly his money, but his melodious voice couldn’t hurt. ;)</p>
<p>Years ago, I read the novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, and I remember the first person narrator trying to explain her attraction to her husband, who was not a nice man. She said that it was his voice…that it was like living with James Mason. (Young folks out there probably won’t have any idea who I’m talking about, but I can hear him perfectly.)</p>
<p>I like everyone’s insights into Albert Vincent. The only one I can add is in regard to Albert Vincent elected as mayor while remaining undertaker. I thought perhaps in a way his election as mayor symbolizes the “death” of Ville Rose. Much is made of the environmental changes taking place that are affecting the “health” of the town. Also he himself is not in the best of health with his shaking hands and cloudy eyes. So not only does he symbolize disparate things professionally but so does his physical person. He is both the elegant man with the “gentle, melodious voice” and the declining man with the cloudy eyes we also see:
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<p>I choose to believe as Mary does: Albert Vincent seduces Claire - perhaps in the funeral parlor after time spent together.
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<p>(Should I be sorry about the ^^^ table quote? I am - slightly - but just couldn’t quite stop myself.)</p>
<p>On a different note, I think Max Sr. knows that Max Jr. is gay. He just doesn’t want to say it or have it said:</p>
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<p>Later Jessamine finally - and “plainly” - says it aloud. </p>
<p>I agree. By the way, I found another “UGH” in my notes. It was when Gaëlle realized that the attractive guy she was thinking of hitting on in a bar was actually the person responsible for the death of her child. </p>