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Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 11

Chapters 12-21

Chapters 22-32

Chapters 33-42

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Entanglement of Past and Present

Cecelia Horner’s experiences in Triple Falls explore how the past affects life and attitudes in the present. When she arrives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Cecelia is still discovering who she is and attempting to define herself outside the context of her family. As a “woman [in]capable of letting go,” Cecelia has a hard time “leaving the past where it belongs, no matter how much [she] want[s] to” (2). For these reasons, Cecelia often finds herself comparing who she was in high school to how she’s behaving and feeling in the present. Her experiences with Sean Roberts and Dominic King particularly influence her outlook. Being around their friend group makes her wish she’d “made a few worthy missteps and been a little bit braver” in her youth (32). Instead, Cecelia defined herself by being careful, obedient, and responsible. In Triple Falls, she begins to wonder if she can outgrow these docile, demure responses and become someone new. She realizes that “here amongst strangers” (32), she has the opportunity to be anyone she wants to be. The novel therefore suggests that new settings and people might help an individual grow beyond her past.

Cecelia’s relationships with Sean, Dominic, and her parents complicate her ability to reconcile who she’s becoming in the present with how she’s presented herself in the past. Cecelia worries that she’s going to repeat her parents’ mistakes and take on the qualities that she perceives as their flaws: She fears that her mother’s history of dysfunctional relationships, or her father’s cold ruthlessness are therefore omens of her future. For example, Cecelia spent years “secretly shaming her [mother] for her blatant promiscuity” (72), but now she realizes that her polyamorous arrangement could be seen similarly from the outside. Accepting her unconventional sexual desires drives Cecelia to let go of these preconceptions and enjoy being in this meaningful relationship.

Cecelia’s constant overthinking, obsessive self-flagellation, and lengthy internal monologues capture her attempts to reconcile her past and present throughout the novel. Once she sees that in the past she was performing a self that was imposed externally, she is better able to embrace her authentic desires in the present. Making amends with her past thus gives Cecelia room to pursue change, exploration, and renewal in the present.

Challenges of Protecting Identity in Relationships

The novel explores the challenges of protecting one’s sense of self amidst complex interpersonal relationships. The more entangled Cecelia’s involvement with Sean and Dominic becomes, the more unsure Cecelia is about who she truly is outside of this dynamic. Cecelia has always seen herself as the controlled, orderly teenager living for other people, tasked with tolerating her father’s absence and her mother’s unpredictability. When Cecelia enters into a polyamorous relationship with Sean and Dominic to reclaim autonomy, it indeed opens Cecelia to new facets of her character and to all “the possibilities of what’s next” (230). At the same time, Cecelia’s guilt over her unconventional lust and love often trumps the relationship’s positive aspects. She becomes so over-invested in her connections with Sean and Dominic that she subsumes herself to their dominant personalities and possessive tendencies—relationship dynamics that gradually overtake Cecelia’s independence. The novel considers the difficulty of balancing individuality and partnership, autonomy and compromise.

Sean and Dominic’s decision to break up with Cecelia compels her to reclaim her identity outside the context of the polyamorous grouping. Cecelia doesn’t regret the love she shared with Sean and Dominic; however, she does hold herself responsible for “actively [taking] part in” their game and for “[allowing] herself to be passed around like a party favor” (346). This image of an unvalued toy evokes notions of powerlessness. Indeed, in the wake of the breakup, Cecelia sees that she’s been living “for nothing but the men that consumed [her]” (354), allowing these relationships to warp her perception of love and herself. This is because she allows her affection for Sean and Dominic “to take up [her] existence” (354). The novel is thus asserting that if intimate relationships are too controlling and insular, the participants might lose their autonomy. This is indeed true for Cecelia who quickly tailors her life and character to satisfy her boyfriends instead of standing up for herself. By the novel’s end, however, she rediscovers her agency and actively takes steps to protect her identity in her current and future relationships.

Costs of Forbidden Love

Cecelia’s relationships with both Sean and Dominic act allow the novel to discuss desire that breaks societal norms. When Sean first tells Cecelia that she’s welcome to be with both him and Dominic, she feels excited to explore her sexuality in new ways. Her sexual and romantic experiences with Sean and Dominic leave her feeling fulfilled and happy, granting her a sense of empowerment, as both men make her “feel like a siren: worshiped, beautiful, sexy” (221). The consensual aspect of the dynamic is freeing, too, because she knows she’s making a choice and that she “can stop this at any time” (221). Indeed, this distinct intimate arrangement between the three characters frees Cecelia from more conservative notions about sex and love—and this “liberation can be a beautiful thing” (215). For these reasons, Cecelia dismisses the risks associated with her love affairs.

One important drawback is that her friends and family wouldn’t approve of Cecelia being with Sean and Dominic, considering this arrangement immoral and deserving of shame. Because she has internalized this attitude herself, Cecelia pulls back from her support system, unable to confide even in her best friend Christy what has been happening in Triple Falls. This self-isolation is potentially dangerous, as Cecelia has no outside sounding board to evaluate her experiences.

Another pitfall is that Cecelia can’t help regarding these entanglements as forbidden and therefore as shameful. Over the course of her polyamorous relationship with her boyfriends, she feels used and degraded and can’t help berating herself for being promiscuous. The longer she is with Sean and Dominic, the more internally conflicted she becomes about the meaning of their connections one to another. As a result, Cecelia’s narrative voice becomes increasingly harried in the novel’s latter chapters. Changes in syntax and form enact Cecelia’s heightening internal unrest, revealing how forbidden love might cause mental and emotional distress.

Finally, the end of this forbidden relationship makes Cecelia feel as if she’s been “tossed […] aside like trash” (347): Her forbidden affairs have compromised her self-worth; she has been so consumed with her passion that when it ends, she has trouble reclaiming her self-esteem. In reaction, Cecelia is compelled to steel herself and to imitate her father’s behavior: to be “just as callous, just as reptilian, as he is” in order to overcome her heartbreak and reground herself in her life (348). These complex emotional dynamics capture how forbidden love might threaten to undo the individual, cause upheaval in her personal life, and divorce her from her identity.