The Unmaking of June Farrow

“My eyes trailed down the dark hallway, to Birdie’s bedroom door. I hadn’t told her about the flashes of light that had begun to appear at the corner of my vision last summer. I hadn’t told her about the echo of voices that drifted in the air around me or the fact that more and more each day, my thoughts felt like sand seeping through the floorboards. It came for my grandmother, as it came for my mother, and now it had come for me. For years, the town of Jasper had been watching me, waiting for the madness to show itself. They didn’t know it was already there, brimming beneath the surface.”

In this passage, the repetition of “I hadn’t told her” emphasizes the extent of the information June has been withholding from Birdie. The text uses a simile, comparing June’s thoughts to “sand seeping through the floorboards,” showing the decline of her lucidity. The language—“brimming beneath the surface”—connects with water imagery and the river that is important throughout the novel. The passage states that Jasper as a collective watches June, emphasizing the novel’s exploration of Misogyny and Mob Behavior in the Small Town.

“Most of the time, I could feel the episodes coming. It was like static in the air, the details of the world sharpening and brightening like the surge of a lightbulb just before my mind slipped. Other times, it snuck up on me.”

This passage features two similes, “like static in the air” and “like the surge of a lightbulb.” This language conveys how June experiences the blurring of time. The phrase “mind slipped” emphasizes how the Farrow women uniquely experience temporal reality.

“In the span of a few moments, that compulsive need I’d had to understand the photograph had turned into a slithering thing. As if the second Ida said my mother’s name, she’d uttered the words of a forbidden spell. The name carried a hallowed kind of resonance.”

The phrase “slithering thing” highlights the uncertainty of the matrilineal mystery and emphasizes that June is compelled by a force outside of herself. The language of “forbidden spell” and “hallowed” emphasizes the fantastical elements of the curse.