How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
It was there but it wasn't a painting, it wasn't on the rock. It was below me, drifting towards me from the furthest level where there was no life, a dark oval trailing limbs. It was blurred but it had eyes, they were open, it was something I knew about, a dead thing, it was dead. (17.8)
When the narrator is diving down in a lake near her father's cabin, she comes across this weird squid-like creature, which apparently is dead. We don't really have all the pieces of this vision's significance yet, but apparently the narrator found it pretty meaningful. With the mystery of the narrator's missing father, the novel set us up to expect the discovery of "a dead thing," but this isn't exactly what we thought was coming.
Quote #8
I know when it was, it was in a bottle curled up, staring out at me like a cat pickled; it had huge jelly eyes and fins instead of hands, fish gills, I couldn't let it out, it was dead already, it had drowned in air. It was there when I woke up, suspended in the air above me like a chalice, an evil grail and I thought, Whatever it is, part of myself or a separate creature, I killed it. It wasn't a child but it could have been one. I didn't allow it. (17.14)
Now we get the full (or, at least, fuller) details of what the vision in the water meant for the narrator. Upon seeing this creature, she realizes she doesn't actually have a child (contrary to what she's been telling us all along); she had actually had an abortion rather than carrying her pregnancy to term. Here, she seems to believe she's seeing the fetus itself or some vision thereof.
Quote #9
His hands descended, zipper sound, metal teeth on metal teeth, he was rising out of the fur husk, solid and heavy; but the cloth separated from him and I saw he was human, I didn't want him in me, sacrilege, he was one of the killers, the clay victims damaged and strewn behind him, and he hadn't seen, he didn't know about himself, his own capacity for death. (17.35)
It appears that Joe is trying to initiate sexytimes with the narrator, but all she can see is a "killer" (his "clay victims" are the mutilated ceramic pots he makes for a living) who doesn't understand his "own capacity for death." It's an odd moment that's certainly up for interpretation, but one important takeaway is that she sees death and murderers everywhere, which definitely adds to the kind of sinister, mysterious feel of the novel.