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Lucrezia Posted 19 years ago
Vocabulary

unretractable

A woman tells of her past and how she was unsure whether she wanted a child, while her husband wanted children badly. Her child later turn out to be a serial killer.

"Why did we take the stake of all we had and place it on this outrageous gamble of having a child? Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it is against the rules to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't. I knew this about myself - I was a woman with the ghastly capacity to rue even so unretractable a matter as another person. But then, our son didn't regard other's people existence as unretractable, did he?

1. In which you didn't? what?
2. unretractable

Please explain or rephrase the underlined parts.

Thanks!
  

Top answer

spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't. Didn't have a child. If you are a parent you are not supposed to spend time imagining life without that child.

  • spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.
  • Didn't have a child.
  • If you are a parent you are not supposed to spend time imagining life without that child.
  • unretractable -something you can't 'take back' or undo.
  • Once you have a child you can't get rid of it.
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5 Answers
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spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.

Didn't have a child. If you are a parent you are not supposed to spend time imagining life without that child.

unretractable -something you can't 'take back' or undo. Once you have a child you can't get rid of it. But Kevin doesn't think that way - he can think of other people's lives as 'cancellabl
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"But Kevin doesn't think that way" - I see you know the book Emotion: smile

Thank you very much, Nona. You've been very helpful.
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No I didn't find it particularly difficult language, but persevere, it is a very good book. I re-read it myself recently.
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"I hope it gets better later on."

I should hope so too, but the quality of the quoted paragraph holds little promise.
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Well it won the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction.

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