The Smell Of Other People's Houses

“Birch Park smelled like an old person’s house, something I’d never noticed when we only visited, which hadn’t been very often. There were no flowers in whiskey bottles, no fresh deer carcasses curing from the rafters. The only meat in the refrigerator was pale and pink, sitting limp on a foam tray and wrapped in plastic. The blood was completely drained out of it, which made me homesick and suspicious.”

The passage describes Ruth’s alienation after relocating to her grandmother’s house. The smell motif illuminates Ruth’s emotional state highlighting her loneliness in a strange environment and the nostalgia of her parents’ loving home. At this point, her relationship with her grandmother remains tense and foreshadows her struggles as she reaches adulthood. This quote highlights the theme of Coming of Age in Times of Change.

“I’ve realized over time that houses with moms in them do tend to smell better. If I close my eyes, I can just barely remember my mother’s wildflowers in their whiskey bottles. The very distant scent of my parents lingers in my brain, as they laugh and twirl around the kitchen. Deer blood on my father’s hands tinges all my memories of them—their skin, their hair, their clothes. The smell of too much love.”

The smell of Ruth’s mother and their home remains in her memories, a sign that she still misses her, and her father. If she feels alienated at her grandmother’s house, it is because her mother is absent. Here, the smell motif connects to Ruth’s idea of love. In her mind, love is defined by the odors of her parents’ house. Ruth always remembers her parents as an ideal couple.

“Dumpling’s dad taught her that the glass is half full; mine taught me that the glass is totally full—of whiskey. Not very many people have a father like Dumpling’s, which is too bad for the rest of us. Sometimes I pretend, just for a few minutes every night before I go to sleep, that her dad is actually my dad, too, and that’s the only time I get any sleep. Most people in Fairbanks just lump all native people together, like the lunch lady who asked if Dumpling and I were sisters. I wish. Never mind that our Athabascan and Inupiat ancestors fought each other—she’s Indian; I’m Eskimo.”

Even if Hitchcock does not profoundly explore Indigenous culture, Dora’s character illuminates the struggles of Indigenous youth in Alaska, as well as their resilience and survival. Dora confronts a double trauma—the familial and the colonial. Her parents are part of an epidemic of substance use disorder in Indigenous communities, and the abuse she endures by her father reflects the legacy of cultural genocide and loss. Dora must claim her national identity along with her personal against erasure.

“Dad starts up the engine and the noise down here is deafening, although I know it won’t take long to get used to and soon will sound no louder than a purring kitten. I breathe in diesel, the smell of my childhood, of sleeping in the belly of this boat that has always made my dreams bouncy. I never sleep as well anywhere as I do here on the Squid.”

As a young adult, Alyce dreams of becoming a dancer but her childhood, which she spent fishing on her father’s boat, formed her character. The smell motif establishes her familiarity with life at sea. The metaphor of Alyce’s “bouncy dreams” on the boat implies that the rhythm of the sea nurtured her love of dancing, representing the two as inextricable parts of her identity. Simultaneously, her father’s boat is the place where she finds peace.

“On the flying bridge the smells are even stronger, trying to draw me out of myself. Salt and mint and fish and wind, mingled with diesel. My arms and legs relax, as if they are made of moss. I used to pretend my parents found me in the rain forest, a magical creature born of spongy muskeg and old man’s beard. It seems almost possible now as I spin around a couple times, trying to get my sea legs, feeling the rhythm of the boat making its own dance.”

This passage further illuminates Alyce’s character. The smells of the landscape reveal her emotional connection to Alaska’s nature. The natural world reinforced her imagination, thus her dreams as a young adult. As she tries to reconnect with the feeling of being on the boat and stabilize herself, she draws a distinct comparison with dancing.

“‘My world is falling out from under me,’ I said.”

Hank’s declaration to his mother, trying to voice his turmoil over her abusive boyfriends, reveals his inner distress. Hank reaches a breaking point after his father’s death as his childhood world is destroyed. His mother’s difficulty navigating life as a single mother and protecting him and his brothers thrusts him into a journey to adulthood.

“Sam was the poet, the one who would keep Dad alive regardless of the facts. Those facts included his entire boat being swallowed in a tsunami. The one that hit right after the Good Friday earthquake had rocked the rest of the state—houses broke in half and slid into the bay in Anchorage; broken roads twisted all the way from Valdez to Turnagain Arm. But hundreds of miles away from the epicenter, it was the ocean that wreaked havoc, swallowing a whole fleet of boats, including our father’s.”

This passage describing the death of Hank’s father emphasizes that Hank’s experiences are inextricably connected to the setting. His father, who was drowned by a tsunami after the devastating earthquake in Alaska, represents the country’s harsh environment, against which the protagonists come of age, highlighting the theme of Coming of Age in Times of Change.

“Right up until it didn’t. For him. I hate the feeling that this is exactly what you hear about. How nothing changes for the guy. I am a cliché and a statistic all in one. And nothing says that louder than this moment, standing in the Salvation Army completely alone, looking for clothes that six of my closest friends probably could have all fit into at once. Except I don’t have six close friends. I’m getting close to having no friends at all.”

Ruth grows up in a society where her agency as a young woman is limited. As her consciousness begins to develop, she realizes she must bear full responsibility for her pregnancy while the life of a young wealthy boy like Ray remains unaffected. However, her treatment by her conservative grandmother has enforced a feeling of shame in her, which makes her reclusive, exacerbating her loneliness.

“Normally I am unflappable, like a still, still pond without one single ripple. I have had years of practice. But like I said, living with Dumpling’s family has softened me around the edges. I have started to let my guard down and not just wait for someone to beat the living daylights out of me. It’s not the big things that are undoing me anymore, but something as simple as Dumpling having a silly secret involving Ruth Lawrence. It feels like my best friend has just skipped a pebble across the glassy surface of my soul.”

As a character, Dora knows he endurance and strives to maintain composure, but her inner distress persists. Dora longs for a sense of belonging while Coping With the Trauma of Familial Disruption and finds a new family at Dumpling’s home. Her jealousy over Ruth’s connection to Dumpling reveals her insecurity about losing this bond.

“I gaze up at the peregrine falcons nesting high on the cliffs as we motor north. The memory of my dad grows smaller and smaller, darting in and out of my brain like the tiny black dots flying above me. It’s hours and hours until we get upriver, and I sleep through them all—more hours than I have slept at one stretch in years.”

Participation in collective communal practices like the fish camp is vital to Dora. On the way there after a disturbing meeting with her father, Dora reconnects with the natural world. Her mind focuses on the Alaskan landscape, which soothes her distress, indicating its healing possibilities.

“Slowly Sam starts doing small jobs like handing fish to Uncle Gorky down in the fish hold or hosing off the deck at the end of the day. Dad shows him how the trolling poles work, explaining that the little bells attached at the top will ring if there’s a big fish on the hook. I don’t know when I learned any of this. Maybe never, because I was born on the boat, so all of this stuff was just part of being human, like learning to talk and walk and breathe.”

Alyce encounters a turning point in her life when she saves Sam. As the two begin to bond, Alyce teaches him her boat and fishing skills and continues to reconnect with her childhood experience and, therefore her inner self. Her time on the boat with Sam helps her recover from the frustration of her parents’ divorce as she shares the experience with someone close to her age for the first time.

“I’m so tired of running and hiding and being in charge. I think about curling myself into a semicircle and sleeping on this bench until the police come to take us back home. Surely that’s what will happen, even as I hear myself say, ‘We can’t go home.’”

Sam’s disappearance raises the stakes of Hank’s coming-of-age journey as his distress intensifies. His feeling of failure in fulfilling the burdensome role of the “big brother” makes him almost abandon his efforts. However, he recognizes that returning home is not a safe option for him or his brother.

“I haven’t heard from anyone since I’ve been here. I didn’t really expect to, but it makes it a million times lonelier and gives me a couple more questions for my list: Are they even curious about where I am? Do Selma and Lily ever wonder about me? Does Dumpling still have my note?”

Loneliness in the abbey makes Ruth question her self-worth and importance to others. As her struggles intensify, she thinks of her friends and little sister, wondering if they care for her. The passage also hints at Ruth’s note, which proves to be another turning point in the story that connects to Dumpling’s accident. This quote highlights Finding Hope Through Friendship and Community.

“Catholics are pretty good at keeping Jesus nailed to that cross, rather than focusing more on that happy bit where he rose from the dead and freed us from sin and evil. It’s like Gran not wanting us to feel too good about ourselves. As if that’s a concern anymore. I’m not sure there will be any rising from anything after I’m done here. Unlike Jesus ascending into heaven, I feel like I’m just headed right over a cliff.”

The passage offers a critique of the catholic values that Ruth’s grandmother exemplifies in the novel. In the abbey, Ruth’s introspection helps her realize the fraudulent righteousness of catholic conservatism. The feeling of shame her grandmother imposed on her makes her experience pregnancy alone, disconnected from the social world. Such values impede any possibility of freedom and ensure the perpetuation of hardship as Ruth feels herself disintegrating.

“But even if I am following in the footsteps of my mother and my grandmother, there’s still a part of me that believes I deserve better. I would give anything for someone to look at me the way Oscar looked at his brother, covered in a pink Hostess Sno Ball. I almost tell Sister Josephine right there on the bank of the river why I broke down back at the mercantile, but it seems silly. How do you find words to describe that much emptiness?”

Ruth confronts a self-crisis exacerbated by isolation and her meeting with Hank helps her realize how she misses affection and intimacy. After learning the histories of her mother and grandmother, which are bound to the isolating environment of the abbey, Ruth desires to break the pattern and claim a different life as a young woman, one characterized by love rather than shame.

“Was it just minutes ago that I hoped she was all scratched up by Ruth’s mother? I want to take that back, along with every other bad and selfish thought I’ve ever had, if she would just sit up.”

Dumpling’s accident is a turning point for Dora, as she realizes the impact of her emotions. Her jealousy, sparked by insecurity, made her adopt an immature stance and wish that Dumpling was hurt for knowing Ruth’s mother. Now that the possibility of losing her best friend is real, she understands that her inner turmoil keeps her disconnecting from the reality of others.

“My dad is staring out the window. My mom left him because she said he wasn’t capable of caring about people, just boats and engines and killing things. But she is wrong. I imagine rebuilding an engine is a hell of a lot easier than making decisions that affect other people’s lives. And then it hits me: Dad’s doing this for Sam because he knows I care about Sam. He’s doing it for me.”

Throughout the story, Alyce believes she must live up to her parents' expectations, but this stance results from her frustration over their separation. Sam, having lost his father, understands that Alyce’s father loves and helps her change her perspective. Alyce watches her father’s stance on Sam and understands his love. This realization liberates her from her self-restraint as her journey progresses.

“I’ll never understand how certain things that happen to us can climb under our skin and make us someone new. Big things can do it—like Sam going missing. Small things can do it, too, like having a stranger fall to pieces right in front of you. I’m beginning to think that everything changes us to some extent.”

Hank realizes that the journey away from home has changed him as he advances on his coming-of-age journey. While troubled by the possible loss of his brother, his meeting with Ruth signals a newfound level of connection for Hank. Their instant bond foreshadows the characters’ hopeful ending.

“At a truck stop somewhere near the Canadian border, I turned seventeen all by myself. I used my emergency money that Gran gave me knotted up in the corner of a handkerchief to buy a Hostess apple pie as a birthday cake. The baby seemed to like it, or at any rate it woke up and played me like a bongo from the inside for the next few hours. I guess I wasn’t truly alone on my birthday after all.”

The passage vividly describes Ruth’s isolation and loneliness in the experience of teen pregnancy. She made the trip to the abbey alone and with no emotional support. However, her will to celebrate herself on her birthday demonstrates her connection to life, even as she feels disconnected from her inner self. This connection is also reinforced by the “new life” that grows within Ruth, her baby.

“I am five years old again; the smell of my parents’ house wraps around me as if someone has put a blanket over my wet, wet shoulders. Her hair looks so much like my mother’s, after my father twirled his bloody fingers in it and they danced in the kitchen.”

The married couple that visits the abbey as potential foster parents for Ruth’s baby reflects the image of her own parents. The woman carrying flowers in a bottle and the man talking about hunting, spark Ruth’s childhood memories. The smell motif conveys these memories, and she feels instantly connected to the pair. Ruth senses that they could be loving parents to her baby, the ones she lacks.

“My father standing on the porch with a rifle does not scare me as much as all the nights I lay awake wondering what he might do to me. At least now I know what I’m dealing with—a drunk man with a gun—not something in the dark that I can’t defend myself against: the smell of alcohol on hot, putrid breath coming closer and closer as I hide my head under my pillow and wait for groping hands—so drunk they cannot even remember what they did the next morning.”

The passage explicitly describes Dora’s trauma of domestic and sexual abuse. She recalls the debilitating fear her father caused her but realizes that she is more powerful than a man who has surrendered to violence and substance use disorder. Confident about her ability to break a destructive pattern, she confronts him. By the end of the novel, she emerges fearless through the support of her community.

“Off to the side, another boy was slumped down against the wall with his head in his hands. Everyone seemed to notice him at the same moment. Sam disentangled himself from the first and went over to the other one, who was older, sadder, and more disheveled. Sam kneeled, burying his head in the boy’s shoulder. The words he’d been mumbling grew louder and louder as Sam hugged him: ‘I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead.’”

Alyce achieves a dual purpose in the narrative, being a key agent in Hank’s reunion with his brothers. Through Alyce’s eyes, the text demonstrates the completion of Hank’s journey. Hank's wearied appearance and his conviction that his brother was dead, emphasize that hopelessness overtook him. Hank experiences a hopeful turn of events that counters his assumption that his life is dominated by loss.

“For the first time, I danced like someone who knew what she wanted. It felt fearless, like I was letting nobody down, especially myself.”

During her successful dance audition, Alyce achieves a new sense of self as a young adult. The transforming experience of sharing life on the boat with Sam, and the new perspective on her parents liberate her from the guilt she imposed on herself and prepare her to embrace adulthood with confidence.