"Normalcy" Response

       Rose is a struggling college student who, while visiting home, discovers that her beloved mother is having an affair. Her parents become separated, and she counsels her father on how to deal with the demands of work and family alone. Rose's mother visits her, and Rose confronts her about her infidelity. 

       There were several things I enjoyed about this story. One aspect was the parallelism of the beginning and ending, with Rose's mother holding her as an innocent child at the beginning, and Rose holding her crying mother as a maturing adult at the end. As the 11 years between the two have passed, Rose and her mother have almost reversed roles, as Rose matures and her mother commits an immature indiscretion and pays for it with the dissolution of her family. I enjoyed how the Sound of Music playing in the background of Rose's discovery of her mother's affair provided a dark contrast between two seemingly happy families. I think this contrast could be played up even more, to emphasize the drama of the moment of discovery. 

       One thing I struggled to reconcile in this story is the mention of Rose's overeating problem. This is brought up one at the end of page two, and never mentioned again. Though it could just be a symptom of her ill-adjustment to college, I kept expecting the eating problem to come up again, and was disappointed when it didn't. Seeing Rose seek help, eat healthy, and take control of her eating habits could be a visible sign of an inward maturation. Though Rose loves her mother deeply, the mother character remains unlikeable and morally condemned for most of the story. The reader gets a small taste of her reasoning for her mistakes, but this only comes in the form of her summation at the very end. She mentions she felt "bored" with "the suburban housewife life," but this is too general and a little cliche to really make the reader feel any sympathy for her. If her dissatisfaction or depression were mentioned earlier in the story and her character developed further through dialogue and memory, the reader would have more sympathy for her. I also wished for more of a resolution at the end, one that makes it clear how the character has changed, rather than how she will compromise her simultaneous anger and love towards her mother.