The Unmaking of June Farrow

“Most of the time, I could feel the episodes coming. It was like static in the air, the details of the world sharpening and brightening like the surge of a lightbulb just before my mind slipped. Other times, it snuck up on me.”

This passage features two similes, “like static in the air” and “like the surge of a lightbulb.” This language conveys how June experiences the blurring of time. The phrase “mind slipped” emphasizes how the Farrow women uniquely experience temporal reality.

“In the span of a few moments, that compulsive need I’d had to understand the photograph had turned into a slithering thing. As if the second Ida said my mother’s name, she’d uttered the words of a forbidden spell. The name carried a hallowed kind of resonance.”

The phrase “slithering thing” highlights the uncertainty of the matrilineal mystery and emphasizes that June is compelled by a force outside of herself. The language of “forbidden spell” and “hallowed” emphasizes the fantastical elements of the curse. 

“There, in the middle of the cemetery, a single red door stood among the tilted headstones. It was set into a frame, like it had been pried loose from a wall, and yet, it didn’t look at all out of place. Like one brushstroke in a painting.”

Young’s description of the door emphasizes the uncanny nature of the family curse. She uses a simile, comparing the door to a “brushstroke in a painting.” 

“I’d missed something. I must have. I’d been at it for hours tiptoeing through the maze and trying to stitch together a story that made sense. But the deeper I went, the more wayward it was. Somewhere along the way, I’d missed something. I must have.”

The above passage repeats “I’d missed something. I must have.” This emphasizes the circularity of June’s thoughts. Her thought process is a “maze,” underscoring the convoluted and confusing nature of the mystery she is attempting to unravel.

“I pressed a trembling hand to my chest, where my heart was beating so hard I was almost sure it would stop. I’d been standing by the Adeline River, a fire glowing on the bank and the moonlight dancing on the water. And Mason was there. It had the sharp detail and nostalgic echo of a…memory. That was the only thing I could think to call it, but I was sure that it had never, ever happened.”

Young emphasizes The Connection Between Memory and Identity. Here, June learns something about herself by remembering something she hasn’t yet lived. Her experience is connected with setting (the Adeline river) and physicality (her heartbeat). Young suggests the complex role of memory in self-discovery.

“I was trapped in a museum of another life.” 

Young emphasizes that June has experienced a life she has clearly lived but doesn’t remember. She uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without using “like” or “as.” In this case, June’s experience has “trapped” her “in a museum of another life.” This short, declarative sentence emphasizes how stark June’s experience is.

“I sat there, studying her face, her hands, the color of her hair. Those embers of memory were glowing now, and I was terrified of the moment they would reignite, like they’d burn all of me down if they could.”

Young uses another metaphor, comparing memory to burning embers. The embers are personified with a salient quality and the agency to burn down June. This emphasizes June’s disconnect from this version of her life, even though she has lived it.

“He doesn’t wait to be told that he can kiss me. He just pulls me toward him, and his hand slides around my ribs, down the center of my back, so that he can hold me against him. Once I’m fully enveloped in his arms, he moves his face close. Our noses touch before his lips part on mine, and he kisses me deeply, every single atom in my body like blinking Christmas lights. It’s not a vision. This is an embedded, sleeping beast that’s been waiting to wake. My head is filling with it, forming a map of memories that stretch and connect. For the first time, I can feel a tether. It stretches tight between me and this man.”

Like other references to June’s “episodes” and memories, this passage includes figurative language. Young uses a simile, comparing June’s atoms to “blinking Christmas lights.” June’s history with her husband is compared metaphorically to a “sleeping beast.”  The passage is a recollection, shown by italics, but is narrated in the present tense. This shows how, in the novel, the distance between past and future is collapsed.

“Eamon and I moved like planets around each other in the kitchen, the smoke from the cast iron making the light hazy and the air rich with the smell of bacon. Annie was sitting on top of the table with a bowl of black cherries, bare feet dangling over the wood floor.”

This passage contains a simile comparing Eamon and June’s movement to celestial bodies. The imagery is paired with the ordinary details of life: smoke from a pan and cooking food. Young implies the importance and magnitude of seemingly small moments in life.

“She twirled a stem in her fingers, the sight summoning endless memories of picking cherries over the backyard fence back home. The neighbor’s cherry tree drooped past its boundary in the corner of the yard, where a small pile of bricks was stacked so that I could reach the lowest branches. I’d pick every single one I could find, and after a while, she’d finally come outside with a little ladder and let me fill a basket.”

This passage precedes June’s confusion about being unable to remember her next-door neighbor’s name. The use of the phrase “the neighbor” rather than the neighbor’s name shows that June is forgetting, which is striking because the reader does know the neighbor’s name. Young explores The Connection Between Memory and Identity and the extent to which memories do or do not make up who people are as individuals.

“Slowly, the memories were stitching together to complete the spider’s web. I could remember little things without much effort now, snatching them from the atmosphere around me as I put on my shoes or uncovered another reseeded plant in the garden. They were trickling in, bits of memory filling my head like drops of water. Longer, weightier memories were harder, drawing away from me almost every time I tried to chase them.”

Young describes memories as physical, tangible items in this passage. The image of June “snatching” memories indicates that she is taking an active role in attempting to remember her life. Young anthropomorphizes the memories, giving them human qualities, by showing how they move away from June. 

“I was still stuck in the dream I’d had of Eamon, drifting between the many memories that were now filling my head. Somewhere between this world and another, I was losing myself.”

This passage physically describes the liminal space between the two time periods in which June has lived. Young collapses time with language—“were now”—to indicate time’s complexity and June’s confusion.

“If I hadn’t walked through that door, was that what would have happened? Was that what was waiting when I went back? If there was a world where Mason and I were more, maybe that’s what I’d gone back to. But then why build a life with Eamon in the first place?”

Repeated questions in this passage emphasize June’s struggle. She grapples with the fact that she and Mason became romantically involved in another timeline. As she asks rhetorical questions, she attempts to comprehend various versions of herself.

“A young Malachi Rhodes was digging a shallow trench a few feet away from the southernmost plot, an irrigation technique we still used on the farm. Esther had been ahead of her time on that practice, but now I wondered how much she’d learned from the future. Had Susanna brought with her the knowledge that Margaret had learned? Had I? Which way had the wisdom traveled?” 

Details in this passage merge different versions of time. The idea of linear time is subverted, with irrigation being something that may have been gleamed from the future, rather than developed in the past. The inclusion of Malachi’s name recalls other instances throughout the text. The novel hints at a romantic relationship between him and Margaret with several subtle details, including the fact that he plays the fiddle at her funeral. This passage also links flowers to consistency across time. Flowers are a prevalent image in both time periods, and knowledge about best practices for gardening travels across time. 

“It was like the embers of a sleeping fire somewhere inside of me, the capacity I had to hold this version of a life. I couldn’t quite grasp it, but that feeling I’d had looking at Eamon as we stood in the glowing lights of the Midsummer Faire had fully manifested now. I didn’t know what was me and what wasn’t anymore. Was I becoming someone else, or was I just finally becoming myself? I couldn’t tell.”

The word “becoming” relates to the novel’s title, contrasting with the titular “unmaking.” The passage emphasizes The Connection Between Memory and Identity and highlights the complexity of finding and losing oneself. The text uses a simile, comparing June’s life with Eamon to “the embers of a sleeping fire” that burn when they’re together.

“And I didn’t think there was any way to ever come back from that explosion of light that had birthed a universe inside of me when she said that word. Mama.”

The one-word sentence, “Mama,” emphasizes how June changes at her core when she becomes Annie’s mother again. The word “birthed” emphasizes the return to motherhood as June comes to know her daughter again.

“I’d been wrong about the June who came through that door five years ago. I’d hated her for the choice she made because I thought it was cruel. I thought it careless. But this aching love that was breaking ground inside of me didn’t feel selfish. It felt brave.”

This passage emphasizes June’s character development. She begins to let go of her belief that the only selfless act she can take is not having a family. The short, declarative sentences—particularly “It felt brave”—emphasize the growing certainty June feels about the rightness of her life with Eamon and Annie.

“‘I didn’t kill him, love,’ he said. ‘You did.’ And as soon as the words left his mouth, I remembered.”

Eamon’s dialogue pairs an endearment—“love”—with a challenging revelation, which is that June killed Nathaniel. The endearment evokes June’s reason for killing Nathaniel: to protect herself and her daughter.

“‘The curse isn’t the door, Eamon. It’s the splitting of time. Esther says that our minds are like a fraying rope.’ I let the loosening fibers work their way down the length of the twine. ‘For every Farrow, it’s the same. Because we are one long, unraveling cord. Esther, Margaret, Susanna, me…we’re all connected.’”

This passage makes the connection between the Farrow women tactile: They “are one long, unraveling cord,” the cord echoing the twine that June is holding.

The combination of verbal and visual elements emphasizes what fraying time could feel like. 

“I reached up, clasping the locket watch in my fist. The door had brought me to 1951 because that’s what the locket was set to. The locket that Gran gave me.”

June realizes that she’d been purposefully sent back to 1951 as she grasps the locket. The locket symbolizes the family curse throughout the novel. This passage emphasizes the locket’s contradictory function: It is both a tool to travel through time and a tangible object that anchors characters in their physical present.

“I remembered that crazed glint in Nathaniel’s eyes as he pushed me down into the water. The unnerving tone of his voice. He’d known. Somehow, he’d known. The question was how much did Caleb remember about our mother? And how much truth was there in what Esther had said about what was passed down in the blood? My own veins were filled with it, too.”

Young emphasizes The Complexities and Circularity of Lineage. The connection between Nathaniel, June, and Caleb is uncertain and connected to what is passed down through heredity. This is a climactic moment: Tensions reach their peak before Caleb lets June go.

“It was the photograph. Nathaniel’s sharp-edged form. That cigarette in his hand. My mother, face turned as she smiled at him. She’d had no idea what that sinister love would set into motion.”

Caleb leaves June with the handcuff keys. A photograph blows out the window, emphasizing the importance of photographs as a motif. June identifies with her mother’s lack of understanding of the future. Young emphasizes this through the use of tense—“she’d had.” The apparent contradiction of “sinister love” emphasizes the complexity of both romantic and familial relationships throughout the novel. Young uses sentence fragments to increase the pacing: “Nathaniel’s sharp-edged form. That cigarette in his hand. My mother, face turned as she smiled at him.”

“The weight of the locket is suddenly heavy around my neck, and I reach inside my nightgown, pulling it free. It clicks as it opens, and I turn its face toward the moonlight. The hands are set to 2022. A place where I exist, where a thirty-three-year-old June Farrow is caring for her ailing grandmother and trying to keep the farm running. Afraid of the future. Grieved by the past. And I’m putting every bit of hope I have in her.”

This passage is a climactic moment for June: She finally remembers the details of leaving Annie to return to 2022 in an attempt to break the curse. It is the last key moment of duality. June thinks about the two versions of herself and puts trust in “her,” the version of herself in 2022. From this point on, she becomes more cohesive. She remembers her life with Eamon and Annie and begins to forget her experiences in the future.