Section 4 Pages 225-300

After reading this final section of the book, I was mostly satisfied with the ending. There was no M. Night Shyamalan-style twist endings like if Lily was her own mother or something equally stupid. However, the arc with T. Ray and Lily did end with me wanting to find out more.

Throughout the novel, We learn that T. Ray is not an ideal father. He punishes Lily harshly for no good reason, he doesn't care for or or even about her, and he wages psychological warfare on Lily by telling her that her mother left her and that she killed her. At the end of the novel, we see T. Ray fly into a fit of rage, but this time confusing Lily for her mother, Deborah. I think this is to show how much more angry T. Ray is at Deborah instead of Lily.

This took me by surprise, since the T. Ray we all know and love would just snatch up Lily and Rosaleen and give them the beating of their lives, but it appears that T. Ray is very hurt from all this, and is not really angry at Lily, but more so at her mother for leaving her.

As for the book as a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters were more than just 1-dimensional entities. For example, T. Ray is not just some evil dad who does nothing but harm. He is a very damaged man who just wants his wife back, but cannot get her back.