Started Reading: June 26, 2007
Finished Reading: June 26, 2007

An important aspect of the book is its subject: incest. Marie and her older brother, Vincent, are adults in their 20’s who have grown up together until an unfortunate accident left them both orphans. The story revolves around their relationship with each other - which isn’t innocent at all - and with society or the people around them. Written in Marie’s perspective, we have another book with an unreliable narrator. Though, in a positive light, we gain a better understanding of Marie in this aspect (for her mind works uniquely: she is dangerous as a person as she is wonderful as a dreamer and poet). We see her struggle with her conscience, her reasoning that she is what she was made to be and it was no fault of hers to feel that way towards Vincent, and we witness her twist reality into a fantasy she could easily grasp and cope with.

Two of the words that would best describe Marie and Vincent’s relationship are irrationally dependent [on each other] and destructive. While they need each other to live - they destroy each other too. Or rather, both their jealousies and violence will. But because they are irrationally dependent on each other, they would never even attempt to live life without each other, which brings us to the end: Vincent dies and Marie commits suicide.

Although I would personally rather read a happy ending, both of them dying is a situation to be understood. At their state - where feelings could not be hidden anymore and desire as natural as the tide that crashes onto the shore - it would seem impossible for them to live bound by society’s rules anymore. Should they have returned from that boat expedition, things wouldn’t really be the same. Their relationship would become more obvious. Vincent, by the latter part of the book, had already started to accept that and to do that. There were less reservations from his actions and in the end, that would influence and encourage Marie to do the same (it always took merely a word from her brother and she would do anything that he had said). It was in dying that they “lived together”.

I wish I could read more books such as this one.