Part 1

The extract belongs to the forth chapter of the novel and it represents a crucial moment in the development of plot and the characters’ level of awareness about the meaning of their encounter.

Indeed, this is the second time Fiona and Adam meet. It is not a planned arrangement since Fiona is totalled surprized to realize that the young men, the life of whom she has decided to save as followed there despite the unfavourable weather conditions from London to Newcastle in the desperate effort to have a contact with her.

The writer’s intention is without any doubt to provide the intelligent reader hints about both characters emotional response, when facing each other. The novelist offers such information into two different ways: firstly, he adopts the technique of telling and once he had decided to do that, he adopts Fiona’s point of view. This implies the reader can only see facts from her perspective and only indirectly from Adam’s point of view.

What adds quality to narration is the use of language made: the narrator exploits elliptic sentences that focus on the different parts of Adam’s face and body. They show the young man transformation after what Fiona perceive at “young health”.  It recalls the previous use of “transformation”. The points Fiona rests on are the typical forms used in courtly love poetry, thus communicating sort of romantic attitude in her thoughts. This explains for the reference to “the face of a Romantic poet, a cousin of Keats or Shelley”. Both Keats and Shelley were Romantic poets that died of tuberculosis, a desperate disease at the time of their lives that had the same effect of today’s cancer of leukaemia.

Adam’s personality appears vividly as the one of a young man full of energy even when he was try to be apologetic. The repetition of “too” in “vivid” and “hungry” returned an image of strength. Also, the intelligent reader and the smart novelist, clearly perceives a typical attitude of adolescence, when he refers to Adam’s effort “to order in his thoughts” the sequence of events. On the all the reader make well understands that the choice of the narrator produces the same effect a film director make get when he adopts a close up in his scenes to let the audience came into close contact with the characters of the film. The result is the reader feels as if he or she were in front of a picture, thus can be sad the novelist rages a cinematic effect, even if both characters are still in the scene. They do not seem to move and everything is only true in Fiona’s mind.

Interesting is to realized that Fiona’s interior monologue is busy making a comparison between before and now: Adam’s first impression and their second meeting. But, strangely enough Fiona also thinks or better “wonders” whether her mother would consider Adam’s face the one of a Romantic hero. Why does Fiona think of her mother, while she is busy coping with her emotion? What justified such thoughts? This is a brilliant indirect connection the novelist wants the intelligent reader to do, and he does it indirectly. Readers are not all the same.

Part 2

The extract refers to a scene in the first chapter that occurs a row between the protagonist and her husband. She is looking out of the window and the reader can clearly perceive Fiona’s mood when she cannot understand the change her marriage and her husband as well, has undergone. The function of the quotation is clearly to introduce and make the reader reflect on marriage crisis.

In addition, as the intelligent reader of the two extracts of the classiest, can clearly see in a comparative analysis what the novelist is very interested in is to follow the stream of consciousness of his female character and one of the most effective means to do it is through the exploitation of scenes. Both the first and the second extract are scenes, and therefore the effect on the reader as well the intention of the writer is dramatic. Scene is the minimal unit of a dramatic product, or play.

Part 3

The more important themes of the novel are:

1.  Fiona’s emotional parabola in order to experienced how difficult it is to live with once choices, the consequences of which are not easily apparent on the very moment you make them.
2.  The controversial theme of ethics versus scientific approach to life. There are different positions and stance in front of making decision that may or may not be in line with one’s religious beliefs
3.  The role of experience and therefore of time are two crucial aspects of everybody’s life, Fiona’s not less.