Jeanette
The narrator of the story who decides to tell us about her transformation. She starts out, at roughly seven, as a good servant to the lord and the Bible, with its teachings being drilled into her from a young age by her adoptive mother. However, when she realises that she has feelings for other girls in her teenage years, she must face the ridicule and abuse from her community and realise that she can be a beacon of honesty and individuality.
Quotes
‘I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had’
‘There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name’
‘She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it’
‘But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that’
‘But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don’t think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray’
‘I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me’
‘In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie’
‘I don’t know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted’
‘Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don’t believe them’
‘No emotion is the final one’