Orchids

About A Boy:

This is Ro, and I think this was my About A Boy group, so I'll just start off with my questions...

1.) Is what Will is doing actually wrong? Obviously, it is extremely shallow, but isn't he really only making himself and the women he tricks happy?

2.) What do you think is the main reason that Fiona tries to kill herself? Do you think it is more a response to her loneliness, or her feeling like a bad mother to Marcus? Or even something else?

This is Nicole, responding to Ro.

1.) At the risk of sounding insensitive, I don't think what Will is doing is as black and white as it first appears to be. Don't get me wrong, I agree that he is being shallow and I know that he's lying to desperate women only to get them in bed. Obviously, I don't support either of those two things; however, what makes me hesitate to say that Will isn't a completely terrible person is the fact that the women are also benefiting from these relationships. Though clearly no one likes to be manipulated, in a strange way Will give hope to these women; he lets them know that just because they have a child doesn't mean they won't ever find love again and also that someone else can potentially love their child as much as they do. (I also doubt that Will isn't the only one having fun while the two are together.) What he's doing is lame and wrong, but I don't think its completely awful; both he and the woman benefit and that's whats most important.

2.) I think Fiona kills herself because of both of those things. First of all, I can't even imagine how hard being a single mother must be. Though she always has the company of Marcus, Fiona also needs adult interaction at times. We learn very early on in the book that Fiona has had a few boyfriends since her divorce and that she had recently broken up with her last boyfriend. She probably was tired of being lonely and decided to take matters into her own hands. Along with that, I think she also feels as though she's failed Marcus. We've seen from the book that he can be hard to handle sometimes, and I bet she felt overwhelmed dealing with her own problems and him at the same time. When Marcus yells at her and actually tells her he is being a bad mother, she reached her breaking point and saw suicide as her only escape.  Hey! It's teresa in pinkkk :)

1. I see what you're saying Nicole...but I almost think him giving the single mothers hope makes what he is doing //worse//. He is really just giving them false hope- because he's not going to be sticking around very long. I have a feeling that there's going to be a happy ending- but a **real-life** version of Will would not have a sudden epiphany and change his bachelor ways. A real-life Will is about to get up and leave as soon as he gets what he wants- sorry to sound so cynical! I guess the book version of Will is not so bad, because we know that it's only a matter of time before he undergoes his protagonist-plot-twisting-change. I guess it's just that when I imagine an actual person like Will, it is a combination of sad and pathetic. Will may seem harmless, but I think the happiness he is bringing the women he is preying on is very false, and like a ticking timer...it's going to end really soon.

2. I think that Fiona kind of caught herself too far into a life that she wasn't meant for. I don't believe that everyone is meant to be a parent- for a number of reasons, some people are probably just better off without kids. All the time people (this happens to me sometimes) think that they know what they want- and then when they get it, it turns out to be not at all what they thought it would be. It's not necessarily that the goal itself was disappointing, but sometimes just that I didn't really want it as badly as I convinced myself...I'm not sure. I suppose Fiona just got caught in one of those traps, and didn't really see any way out. Feeling bad about it didn't really help anyone, so suicide was her alternative.