Fiona渐渐变得忘记越来越多的事情，走向野外的时候回忘记了她家是在哪里。也忘记了住在这里多久了。对于七八十岁的人来说也算正常吧。
看同名电影柳暗花明时候，我想的最多的问题是，如果我老了，我会处于一个什么样的境况。
- Fiona
对Fiona着笔远远少于Grant。但我听喜欢Fiona这个形象，可能也和电影Fiona的扮演者很有气质，平静的表情。演的很到位。 - Grant
虽然Grant的着笔比Fiona多很多。他的转变和转变后对Fiona的执着也让人不可思议。但是我还是不喜欢这个角色。
因为他曾经出那么多次轨，一定深深伤害了Fiona。怎么可以拿那些出轨后就抛弃妻子的人作比较。那为什么不拿那些对妻子异常忠贞的人作比较呢。
是不是我要求太高？
两性在一起也许新鲜感会越来越少，但是也不能成为出轨理由。
也许我对感情仍旧是太幼稚。
是不是对于迷途知返的应该给于原谅。
门罗大概写出了人性的两难性。是否就这样原谅丈夫的出轨还是一定要闹分手。
Fiona的父亲原来是一名心脏学专家，用关系让Grant成为大学教授，但是Fiona却只是一个护士之类的，还必须依靠丈夫才维持中产阶级地位。即使是父母有能力，为了维持下一代高标准的生活，却只能培养女婿，这不可不说是女性的悲哀，女性权利的无。
开头的描写
小说
“FIONA LIVED IN her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish. Her mother was Icelandic – a powerful woman with a froth of white hair and indignant far-left politics. The father was an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital but happily subservient at home, where he would listen to strange tirades with an absentminded smile. All kinds of people, rich or shabby-looking, delivered these tirades, and kept coming and going and arguing and conferring, sometimes in foreign accents. Fiona had her own little car and a pile of cashmere sweaters, but she wasn’t in a sorority, and this activity in her house was probably the reason.
“Not that she cared. Sororities were a joke to her, and so was politics, though she liked to play “The Four Insurgent Generals” on the phonograph, and sometimes also she played the “Internationale,” very loud, if there was a guest she thought she could make nervous. A curly-haired, gloomy-looking foreigner was courting her – she said he was a Visigoth – and so were two or three quite respectable and uneasy young interns. She made fun of them all and of Grant as well. She would drolly repeat some of his small-town phrases. He thought maybe she was joking when she proposed to him, on a cold bright day on the beach at Port Stanley. Sand was stinging their faces and the waves delivered crashing loads of gravel at their feet.
“Do you think it would be fun –” Fiona shouted. “Do you think it would be fun if we got married?”
He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.”
“JUST BEFORE THEY left their house Fiona noticed a mark on the kitchen floor. It came from the cheap black house shoes she had been wearing earlier in the day.
“I thought they’d quit doing that,” she said in a tone of ordinary annoyance and perplexity, rubbing at the gray smear that looked as if it had been made by a greasy crayon.
She remarked that she would never have to do this again, since she wasn’t taking those shoes with her.
“I guess I’ll be dressed up all the time,” she said. “Or semi dressed up. It’ll be sort of like in a hotel.”
电影
- 一开场的时候在海边，Fiona说我们结婚会有趣么。一个男人把她举了起来，很开心的样子。这样的视觉形象一闪而过。
- 第二个场景，是两个孤单的老人在厨房里捣鼓，一个人在水池旁收拾碗筷，Grant从后面抱着Fiona。当Fiona把锅放在冰箱里的时候，Fiona没说什么，把锅从冰箱里拿出来放到了柜子里。从细节展现出原来Fiona大概失忆了吧。空荡荡的房子里只有他们两个人相依为命。
看到这段的时候，我想如果我和乖乖走下去，我们会面临什么样的境况？
从这些画面来看，电影真的挺忠实于原著的。电影给我的视觉印象果然更加深刻。但是小说对于人物人心形象的描写是电影难以比拟的。Grant到低怎么想的，也只有看原著才更明白。
叙事结构
小说的每句话都看上去挺短的。
比如：
“Do you think it would be fun –” Fiona shouted. “Do you think it would be fun if we got married?”
He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.”
雷蒙德卡佛的作品也是，是不是这是北美短篇小说的一个特色？
对小说细节的描写，比如Fiona
“She rinsed out the rag she’d been using and hung it on the rack inside the door under the sink.“ Then she put on her golden-brown fur-collared ski jacket over a white turtle-necked sweater and tailored fawn slacks. She was a tall, narrow-shouldered woman, seventy years old but still upright and trim, with long legs and long feet, delicate wrists and ankles and tiny, almost comical-looking ears. Her hair, which was light as milkweed fluff, had gone from pale blond to white somehow without Grant’s noticing exactly when, and she still wore it down to her shoulders, as her mother had done. (That was the thing that had alarmed Grant’s own mother, a small-town widow who worked as a doctor’s receptionist. The long white hair on Fiona’s mother, even more than the state of the house, had told her all she needed to know about attitudes and politics.)
对于人物的描写挺细致入微的。
我的五十岁的母亲人生还有至少三十多年可以活着，真的挺长的。我真的不希望他们现在就觉得一辈子好像就告一阶段就结束了一样，其实不是的。但是什么对于他们来说是值得做下去的呢？我有那么成熟和成长可以给他们指明明路么。
大概没有。
如果我希望在那个年纪我能做什么。大概也是有一个稳定的家。有自己大大的房子，那样就可以有一个属于自己的书屋了。还有健康的身体吧。闲的时候看看书。
现在的母亲是怎么样：
母亲虽然很瘦小，但是肚子看起来还是有点凸起。脸上的皱纹越来越深了。如果摄像头从下部看上去，母亲的脸看起来是如此的苍老。甚至有点肥大。脸看上去越来越方了，虽然是小脸但是岁月的痕迹很明显打在脸上。母亲对着装也越发不在乎，随意穿上个内裤就在房间转悠。母亲每天的消遣就是饭后看看电视。到那个年纪的父母的期望就是可以抱个小孩。
“Otherwise Fiona with her fine bones and small sapphire eyes was nothing like her mother. She had a slightly crooked mouth which she emphasized now with red lipstick – usually the last thing she did before she left the house. She looked just like herself on this day – direct and vague as in fact she was, sweet and ironic.”
- 在超市迷失，被警察捡到。警察问：总统是谁。Fiona说如果你这都不知道，怎么当警察。 小幽默。
- Russian wolfhounds
- 家里各处的小纸条
Meadowlake的出现是通过Fiona说错名字，认为是Shallowlake。
- A kind of experimental treatment.
- A rest cure.
这个代价真的好高。不知道送到这种病院让老人和亲人隔离一个月的制度真的是真的么。如果是真的，觉得好残酷。就这样让生病的老人无依无靠那么久。如书中的Grant，就这样被她的妻子忘记了。
不过只有被忘记了的情节，故事才可以继续发展下去。生活中的细小差错让生活变得更加有趣到低是值不值得的。
“THERE WAS A RULE that nobody could be admitted during the month of December. The holiday season had so many emotional pitfalls. So they made the twenty-minute drive in January. Before they reached the highway the country road dipped through a swampy hollow now completely frozen over. The swamp-oaks and maples threw their shadows like bars across the bright snow.
Fiona said, “Oh, remember.”
Grant said, “I was thinking about that too.”
“Only it was in the moonlight,” she said.
She was talking about the time that they had gone out skiing at night under the full moon and over the black-striped snow, in this place that you could get into only in the depths of winter. They had heard the branches cracking in the cold.
So if she could remember that so vividly and correctly, could there really be so much the matter with her?
It was all he could do not to turn around and drive home.”
在开车去医院的路上触景生情想到他们曾经在这里游玩的情景。Grant怀疑了，Fiona真的是什么都忘了吗，还是和自己开玩笑。人生好像就是一个玩笑，我们在一起了，然后我们老去，记忆见见把我们离弃，让我们忘记了曾经的美好时刻。
门罗的小说中其实也没有完全只是讲女性的，如果只是从女性的视角去分析这本书，也是可以，但那只是评论书的人选取的一个角度而已。
“THEY HAD GONE over to Meadowlake a few times several years ago, to visit Mr. Farquar, the old bachelor farmer who had been their neighbor. He had lived by himself in a drafty brick house unaltered since the early years of the century, except for the addition of a refrigerator and a television set. He had paid Grant and Fiona unannounced but well-spaced visits and, as well as local matters, he liked to discuss books he had been reading – about the Crimean War or Polar explorations or the history of firearms. But after he went to Meadowlake he would talk only about the routines of the place, and they got the idea that their visits, though gratifying, were a social burden for him. And Fiona in particular hated the smell of urine and bleach that hung about, hated the perfunctory bouquets of plastic flowers in niches in the dim, low-ceilinged corridors.
Now that building was gone, though it had dated only from the fifties. Just as Mr. Farquar’s house was gone, replaced by a gimcrack sort of castle that was the weekend home of some people from Toronto. The new Meadowlake was an airy, vaulted building whose air was faintly pleasantly pine-scented. Profuse and genuine greenery sprouted out of giant crocks.
Nevertheless, it was the old building that Grant would find himself picturing Fiona in during the long month he had to get through without seeing her. It was the longest month of his life, he thought – longer than the month he had spent with his mother visiting relatives in Lanark County, when he was thirteen, and longer than the month that Jacqui Adams spent on holiday with her family, near the beginning of their affair. He phoned Meadowlake every day and hoped that he would get the nurse whose name was Kristy. She seemed a little amused at his constancy, but she would give him a fuller report than any other nurse he got stuck with.
Fiona had caught a cold, but that was not unusual for newcomers.
“Like when your kids start school,” Kristy said. “There’s[…]”
这一部分情节在电影中也被省略了。好像也不太好用视觉语言去描述这一段，怎么描述？这段更多的是人物心理状态的描写。
Mr Farquar 单身汉农民是他们的邻居。对于他们对他在养老院的访问，Mr Farquar更觉得是一个负担而不是感激。Fiona特别讨厌尿的味道和到处的漂白剂。
现在建筑物的状况改变了，虽然那个建筑是在五十年代才建立的。
在Fiona在医院的时候，Grant想象Fiona住的是Mr Farquar住的那原来的房子，如果用镜头表现，大概就切换到老房子，然后加上旁白？Fiona原来住的是这个房子。观影者想，这是什么鬼。视觉语言的局限性。
- Kristy 小说中还用少数的几个笔触描写了一些其余人，比如Kristy。当Fiona住在医院一个月的时候，Grant每天打电话，Kristy会耐心接听。告诉Grant Fiona每天的进展。
“He phoned Meadowlake every day and hoped that he would get the nurse whose name was Kristy. She seemed a little amused at his constancy, but she would give him a fuller report than any other nurse he got stuck with.”
“Fiona had caught a cold, but that was not unusual for newcomers.
“Like when your kids start school,” Kristy said. “There’s a whole bunch of new germs they’re exposed to, and for a while they just catch everything.”
Then the cold got better. She was off the antibiotics, and she didn’t seem as confused as she had been when she came in. (This was the first time Grant had heard about either the antibiotics or the confusion.) Her appetite was pretty good, and she seemed to enjoy sitting in the sunroom. She seemed to enjoy watching television.”
Kristy是有四个孩子的母亲，在影片中她也耐心解答Grant。当管理者除了一开始比较耐心对待Grant以后，对Grant就处于一种不理睬状态，根本不关心病人和病人家人的状况。走路也是匆匆忙忙。
- 对待电视的态度
“They had spied on the lives of every beast or reptile or insect or sea creature that a camera was able to reach, and they had followed the plots of what seemed like dozens of rather similar fine nineteenth-century novels. They had slid into an infatuation with an English comedy about life in a department store and had watched so many reruns that they knew the dialogue by heart. They mourned the disappearance of actors who died in real life or went off to other jobs, then welcomed those same actors back as the characters were born again. They watched the floorwalker’s hair going from black to gray and finally back to black, the cheap sets never changing. But these, too, faded; eventually the sets and the blackest hair faded as if dust from the London streets was getting in under the elevator doors, and there was a sadness about this that seemed to affect Grant and Fiona more than any of the tragedies on Masterpiece Theatre, so they gave up watching before the final end.”
活生生的家庭生活展现在眼前。
- 叙述方式
电影和小说都是夹杂着叙述。
“ They had usually prepared supper together. One of them made the drinks and the other the fire, and they talked about his work (he was writing a study of legendary Norse wolves and particularly of the great Fenris wolf who swallows up Odin at the end of the world) and about whatever Fiona was reading and what they had been thinking during their close but separate day. This was their time of liveliest intimacy, though there was also, of course, the five or ten minutes of physical sweetness just after they got into bed – something that did not often end up in sex but reassured them that sex was not over yet.”
两个人亲密的生活方式。
“So Grant went off to find Fiona in Meadowlake – the old Meadowlake – and got into a lecture theater instead. Everybody was waiting there for him to teach his class. And sitting in the last, highest row was a flock of cold-eyed young women all in black robes, all in mourning, who never took their bitter stares off him and conspicuously did not write down, or care about, anything he was saying.
Fiona was in the first row, untroubled. She had transformed the lecture room into the sort of corner she was always finding at a party – some high-and-dry spot where she drank wine with mineral water, and smoked ordinary cigarettes and told funny stories about her dogs. Holding out there against the tide, with some people who were like herself, as if the dramas that were being played out in other corners, in bedrooms and on the dark verandah, were nothing but childish comedy. As if charity was chic, and reticence a blessing.
“Oh, phooey,” Fiona said. “Girls that age are always going around talking about how they’ll kill them”
小说中加进了梦的叙述方式。Grant想去Meadowlake找Fiona，但是却到了一个剧院。这个梦境的刻画是不是也有点想象力？但是在电影中只是通过Grant的叙述表现出来，可能一般人不会去仔细回味Grant说的这话。
