Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Error in Judgement

Yeah, so I finished Morality for Beautiful Girls (Alexander McCall Smith, another Mma Ramotswe novel, excellent) and started Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene. First of all, he's very sly and brilliant and jaded, this Graham Greene person. "Isn't it lovely how you always get what you pray for?" I had to read that sentence twice before I spotted the "r," and then I laughed out loud on the train.

But I did make a mistake that screwed up my initial understanding of the book. When Wormold tells his friend that they're going out to buy a bottle to celebrate Milly's 17th birthday, I was a little grossed out that his wife was so young. It didn't really surprise me that much, though. But then he starts talking about her at the age of 13, and I'm so skeeved out! Yes, skeeved! And then he tells the guy she's his daughter so he doesn't look like the gross old letch he is...

No wait. I flip back through the first 23 pages of the book. Nowhere does it say he's married to Milly. She is his daughter. That's why he's known her since she was 4 (and, presumably, before). So when he refers to her mother, it's not about him buying her off some poor woman when she was 12, it's that he was married to her mother, and fathered a child with her.

I am DISGUSTING.

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