Amelia Gray & THREATS: Framed and Finished
Although the couple’s careers seem like careful choices, Gray insists that their similar lines of work occurred naturally while writing the novel.
“I wanted David and Franny to become true echoes of one another. Their occupations and attitudes originally felt randomized and individual to me, but I started to see the natural echoes, and then it was in my mind,” she says. “They say couples start to physically resemble one another as the years go on, and I wanted to play with that, make them so similar to one another that they could conceivably be the same person, because that’s what love is. I think that shit is beautiful.”
Oddly, the novel ends with its most intimate moment: Franny’s thoughts are finally revealed (almost all previous musings were David’s–Gray isn’t sure why she waited so long to reveal Franny’s dying thoughts, except that “Joyce did it in Ulysses and it worked well enough for him”).
“It seemed possible to express anything by looking at him, and so she looked, the energy leaving her feet and hands and filling her eyes… which watched him and twitched slightly, scanning his eyes, imparting every truth with perfect clarity,” Gray writes of Franny’s final moments. But if every truth had been imparted, why is David left in confused shambles?
Similarly, Gray seems to believe she’s communicating clearly with readers by penning small, disconnected moments. The meaning is sometimes lost, but the experience is still quite beautiful.
