"It was so strange, how the end could precede death by years, by decades."

I must say I have a complicated relationship with this novel. The topic handled was heavy - being a caretaker of disabled individuals can never be easy, caring for an adult who cannot care for themselves anymore, watching them and their family suffer, trying in vain to get used to a new reality, to the fact that life really is unfair and there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. But this is the part that I liked, the exploration of decay. The main character, though - her, I hated.

"It was a strange way to make a living: the slow creep of hours, the tedium of domesticity and isolation, morning talk shows bleeding into drowsy afternoon soaps, all pierced with looming mortality and surreal delusions."

So, Ella is 29 and a caretaker. She abandoned her Master's program for an unspecified reason but seems to still be clinging to an ideal of a life she has given up. She even says herself that this was not the life she imagined. It's like she's wanting for something different but is unwilling to do anything about it. Alas, she seems to be good at what she does, she bonds with her charges and does her duties well.

The job she is interviewing for is the one through which the novel follows her. Jill has had an accident about 15 years ago and, as her condition worsened, her husband and primary caretaker Bryn is looking for some help. There is some mention of their son Nick but he is there just in passing (literally, he is present at the interview and later he brings over a load of laundry). What is immediately apparent is that Ella has some sort of weird fascination with Bryn (which becomes morbid in the latter half of the book) and that she is lazy. 

She often ruminates on how handsome Bryn is (a Robert Redford type, apparently), even imagined having intercourse with him, and has some pretty unflattering thoughts about his hypothetical future girlfriend. It was all so strange and is one of the reasons I dislike Ella so much. She is also gay, lives with her girlfriend Alix, but doesn't correct Bryn when he assumes her partner is a man. She defends this by saying her clients are usually conservative and they don't need to know anything about her life - but I feel she just wants to be seen as an option to Bryn, she wants him to want her. 

"Why was this so startling? Did she think so little of men that it surprised her when they displayed the decency she would expect from a woman? Or did she think so little of women that they didn't warrant tender, self-sacrificing care from a man? It was both. It was neither."

Ella always finds ways to cut corners. She brings over books, puzzles, crosswords, stitching, mending... anything she could do while Jill is down for her nap. Aware that this is not exactly the right thing to do, that Bryn is paying her for more than to just sit around, she still doesn't offer any further help and is pleased when he doesn't ask. This is exemplified in the dirty bathroom which she vows to herself to clean each time she enters it but never even starts the task. 

"Their roles were stripped genderless through a wildfire of loss, standing stark where lush growth might have hidden predators, there was only charred and shivering sufferer and co-sufferer, lover and beloved."

As I mentioned previously, my main frustration with this book is Ella. Now, she isn't a badly written character, or maybe not even a bad character, but I found her simply unbearable. She is plump but pretty, as she says. She hates the excess weight and feels like it's a burden she's lugging around, but she loves cameras, loves flirting and being liked. Though in a relationship she considers cheating a couple of times because she sees faithfulness as a prison. Still, she doesn't want Alix to leave her for someone better - because it would make her feel bad about herself. At times I felt she was more animal than human, her hedonistic instincts would kick in and it made me recoil as I was reading the words. 

Some of her thoughts were relatable and understandable, though. Her constant anxiety about how Bryn is perceiving her, wondering whether she should comfort him or nor, worrying a tough might be a way to cross some invisible boundary. Her thoughts about religion and god as a queer person were exceptional - 'Ella could remember exactly where she's been, exactly what she was doing when God died.' A section where she changes Jill, who is screaming and trashing and kicking, is something that stuck with me as well: she felt like she was violating her. The image really resonated in me - she is changing a grown woman, stripping her down without her consent (because she is unable to even give it), doing things she obviously doesn't want. But here's the catch - it's for her own good. 

The relationship between Bryn and Jill, his love and care, his refusal to let her go, the determination to care for the woman he loves by himself is the beautiful part of this story. He has given up everything, his job, presumably his social life, his sex life (they are in their 60s and this has lasted for about 15 years) so he could stay with a woman who has lost everything. He has lost her completely and her physical presence is all that is left so he clings to it as long as possible. The visual of him getting a rash on his arms and hands when it becomes inevitable that she will need to be moved to a care facility is another indicator if this.

"Maybe there was no place for coy euphemisms at the front lines."