Monday, August 20, 2007

All Else Confusion, chapter 6

Here's what happens at the end of Annis's and Jake's wedding day: Annis "wished him goodnight, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, because all her life she had kissed her parents goodnight and it was going to be a habit hard to break" (p. 110). O-kay. I know it's a chaste Betts, and that they have an agreement to stay celibate for the first few months of their marriage (because it's essentially a marriage of convenience for Jake), but Annis's confusion between her parents and Jake is strange.
They dash off to Lisbon for a few days, because Jake has business there. Jake buys Annis several dresses. As always, good clothes transform a Betts heroine into something quite lovely. I can think of only one person in my acquaintance who looks noticeably different, and better, in formal dress, so I find this strange.
There's a tiresome - and red-flag raising, if either of these people thought - sequence where Jake asks Annis to eat lunch alone in their hotel room. But she sees him driving with an attractive woman before lunch, so she eats in a restaurant and sits with one of his colleagues. So he's cranky that she went against his wishes about her lunch (!), so she mentions the woman, and all is well. But were I a marriage counselor, I'd warn Jake about being controlling and Annis about jealousy.

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