How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I have to behave as though it doesn't exist, because for me it can't, it was taken away from me, exported, deported. A section of my own life, sliced off from me like a Siamese twin, my own flesh cancelled. Lapse, relapse, I have to forget. (5.44)
The narrator has stated that she and her ex-husband had a baby, but she doesn't appear to be involved with "it"—in fact, she pretends to others (like Anna) that the child doesn't exist.
Quote #8
There's no act I can perform except waiting; tomorrow Evans will ship us to the village, and after that we'll travel to the city and the present tense. (6.1)
This sentence really highlights how much the narrator feels like being home is yanking her back into the past against her will. Before David makes the executive decision that they're all staying longer, she's really looking forward to getting back to the "present tense."
Quote #9
I look around at the walls, the window; it's the same, it hasn't changed, but the shapes are inaccurate as though everything has warped slightly. I have to be more careful about my memories, I have to be sure they're my own and not the memories of other people telling me what I felt, how I acted, what I said: if the events are wrong the feelings I remember about them will be wrong too, I'll start inventing them and there will be no way of correcting it, the ones who could help are gone. I run quickly over my version of it, my life, checking it like an alibi; it fits, it's all there till the time I left. Then static, like a jumped track, for a moment I've lost it, wiped clean; my exact age even, I shut my eyes, what is it? To have the past but not the present, that means you're going senile. (8.36)
Hmm, what now? She's not sure sometimes if her memories are her own? That's a little weird… apparently, she believes that she has the capacity to invent memories or let other people shape what she remembers. This moment should put us a little bit on our guard about believing what she has to tell us.