Opening Lines
The opening lines of the book present imagery that foreshadows the use of the technique to come. This is an impressionistic novel in which language is used obliquely to provide a sense of things rather to directly describe.
The water rushed the low bank, its first destruction the unbinding of the strange bound sticks that had for years appeared along the West Side Highway bike path, sticks crisscrossed atop stones stacked in ways that suggested they meant something to someone.
The Art Studio
Central to the plot is an art studio destined to become a much more profitable condominium. Most of the characters come to the studios for one reason or another and it is those various reasons that unifies the plot by connecting the storylines.
The overheated studio is almost unbearable, the radiators knocking as if to explode. Sid’s propped the huge filthy studio windows open with crusted paintbrushes, the wind rattling the metal frames, blowing in occasional snowflakes from the alley that melt the instant they touch the bowed wooden floor. A dance barre runs from here to there; one wall a mirror reflecting the three: two women hunched in boiled wool, a man in suspenders and a dirty shirt, flakes of dry skin on the collar.
Debussy
The title of the novel is derived from a classical musical composition by Debussy. At one point, Helen—an artist who uses the studio for teaching—shares the story behind the music with the reader through imagery as she recalls it in her mind.
“a city built out of the sea and circled by a high dike to protect it from tempests—rough storms, her father said. They say its only entry was an elaborate brass door on which artisans who had sailed down from the north had carved mermaids and mermen, the creatures’ webbed hands and scaled tails worn from the many kisses of the king’s admirers.”
The Movie Star
One of the characters whose paths cross at the intersection of an apartment building and the art studio is a movie star. Imagery is used to convey how people have been conditioned to treat celebrities in the big city. It is a bit different than how things are done in small towns, no doubt.
The people did their part: they did not stare as they ate their red velvet cupcakes, sitting on one of the benches outside the famous cupcake bakery, or their organic ice creams on their way up the steps to walk the High Line, where, inevitably, they waited their turn to look through the telescope out at an installation that meant something they waited in line to read what.
