Being different and an outsider is always difficult. Have you ever been the new kid in a school, the one who starts in the middle of a year after everybody knows each other already and have established their relationships? You end up spending a lot of time observing the other kids, trying to figure out how and where you can fit in. Sometimes you try too hard and end up looking even more outlandish, and fitting in even less than before you started trying to be "one of the gang", and as a result you become even more ostracized.
Of course if there's anything the least bit odd about you, or your brothers and sisters, that makes it even twice as hard. Even if it's only something as seemingly trivial as wearing your hair the wrong way, having the wrong clothes, or eating the wrong food for lunch you're labelled as the dreaded different. Imagine how bad it would be if you had some real difference, like a foreign accent or different skin colour. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter that you think you might be succeeding, you'll just never blend, never be able to fit in with anybody who you try to hang out with.
In Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town, (available for free download, like all of his books, by following the link,) when we meet Alan he seems to be just like any upwardly mobile young man. He's just bought an old house and spent a lot of time and energy on renovating it to just the way he likes it. While he may seem a tad obsessive about how he goes about sanding the floors, or taking inordinate amount of pride in the fact that he's given the contractor's discount at the building supply place, I've known plenty of people who have similar quirks and idiosyncrasies.
Even the fact that he's opened and sold off three businesses isn't too odd. Lots of people are entrepreneurs like that, finding their pleasure in developing an idea and once its a successful going concern feel the need to move onto a new project. However, the borders of the picture you've begun to visualize as Alan become a little blurred when he starts to make references to his parents. At first you figure he could be talking metaphorically - the son of a mountain could just mean his father was huge, a mountain of a man. Even when he says his mother was a washing machine you can still bring your mind to bear on that by telling yourself it's a reference to her cleanliness and her nurturing abilities.
Article comments
1 - Julia Scott-Douglas
Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town sounds fascinating. I'll have to read it. Thanks a ton for doing a review on it!