The Talisman

“There was too much death, the world was half-made of death.”

When the novel begins, Jack’s entire outlook focuses on inevitable loss and constant grief. Until he meets Speedy Parker, he has lost all concept of optimism. Speedy’s mission gives him hope, and although his journey will involve a great deal of death, Jack will eventually find hope again.

“[F]or a moment the gull was looking at him, its eyes a deadly black, confirming every horrible truth: fathers die, mothers die, uncles die even if they went to Yale and look as solid as bank walls in their three-piece Savile Row suits. Kids die too, maybe…and at the end all there may be is the stupid, unthinking scream of living tissue.”

The gull that mocks Jack gives him an existential moment of dreadful reflection. As it eats the clam, Jack envisions himself and the world as the prey, and the gull as the death that waits for everyone. Death reduces everything to the same state: suffering, deteriorating flesh.

“Jacky, you can never be too thin or too rich.”

Jack’s mother recycles a Hollywood adage that is only half-joking in her case. Her identity is crystallized in her former B movie celebrity status. As an actress, she made good money and was adored for her beauty and figure. As she wastes away in the Alhambra, she grows dangerously thin, and no amount of money can save her life.