Maybe it's just me, but I can't shake the feeling that Wolf Whistle is haunted by the specter of incest. Solon's recollection of his abusive father is the big example, of course, but there are a number of smaller and subtler moments in the novel which hint at the same issue- Joyce and Cloyce's rhyme about Eugene Brister kissing his sister, for example (84). When Alice imagines herself speaking to her uncle as a wife would speak to her husband, one begins to wonder what Nordan is saying about family relationships, and connections between people in general. On some level, Wolf Whistle is a novel about people who don't know how to relate to each other. "Are we alone in this world?" and "everyone is alone in this world" are codas which appear frequently throughout; relationships between blacks and whites shift disastrously and arbitrarily; along with Alice's estrangement from Dr. Dust, Nordan takes pains to render the splintering and chaotic dynamic of the Gregg family, as well as Lord Montberclair's anxieties, by turns violent and tender, regarding his relationship with his wife. With childlike innocence, Red worries that Runt is angry with him. Wolf Whistle is full of characters who try to connect with each other and often go about it in the wrong way. Romantic and sexual relationships, friendships, familial love, and interracial harmonies seem to be built on shaky, shifting, and unsteady foundations. Alice whispers "I love you" to pillows and parrots because she can't say it to Dr. Dust. She talks to her uncle like a husband because the people in Wolf Whistle have trouble knowing how families and marriages and friendships and societies are put together.
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.
Questions: What do Alice's anxieties about family and love tell us about relationships in Wolf Whistle? What sort of portrait of social connections is Nordan painting?
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