51 pages • 1 hour read
Barbara O'NealWhen We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Surfing
The novel begins with Kit leaving work and going to the cove to surf where her family home/restaurant once stood. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Kit learned how to surf from the boy who came to live with her family and served as both an older brother and surrogate parent to her in her childhood. By visiting this location at the beginning of the novel, and again at the end, Kit reveals the importance of this place, but also the significance of surfing in her life. At the beginning, surfing is a way of relaxing after a tense night as an emergency room doctor. However, it quickly becomes evident that surfing has strong connections to trauma that defines Kit’s past and still influences her present. In this capacity, surfing is a motif that explores the theme of The Lasting Effects of Childhood Trauma.
Kit closely relates her enjoyment of surfing to her relationships with Dylan and Josie. However, Kit harbors some resentment toward Josie for using surfing to escape the trauma of their lives and to continue the estrangement that comes with addiction. Kit both uses surfing to feel closer to her sister and Dylan and to attempt to escape the realities of her life. At the same time, both Dylan and Josie also used surfing as an escape. Dylan only appears to have felt joy when he was surfing, as suggested by the recurring dream Kit has of him wiping out and drowning while surfing a perfect wave. Josie made surfing a part of her abandonment of the family, using it as an excuse to travel the world while caught in the web of addiction. For Josie, surfing was something that kept her close to Dylan, unable to recognize how being close to Dylan only compounded the trauma that led to her struggle with addiction.
At the end of the novel, surfing changes as Kit and Josie/Mari’s perceptions of the world around them shift. For Josie/Mari, surfing became a way to connect with other people, leading her to her friendship with Nan and her romance with her husband, Simon. For Kit, surfing is the way in which she finds her sister, and one of the ways they work to reconnect. In the end, surfing becomes symbolic of connection, of friendship, and of new beginnings.
Food
Food is often used as a backdrop in novels, an opportunity for characters to connect over meals or to share a moment of pleasure. In this novel, food takes on a more important role as it appears in almost every important moment of Kit’s experience throughout the story. The first time food appears in the plot is when Kit describes the restaurant her passionate, bigger-than-life father owned. Kit describes how her father behaved in the kitchen, where his passion for food was born, and how that passion spilled into his relationship with her mother, leaving Kit and her sister to suffer. Later, when Kit meets Javier, it is over a meal that Kit connects to her father because of its cultural connection to his heritage, exploring her reluctance to enter into a relationship that could be destroyed by the same sort of passion that adversely impacted her childhood. Still later, Javier introduces Kit to several meals from his culture as their relationship expands and becomes romantic, pushing Kit’s comfort with his obvious desire to explore a relationship that goes beyond her idea of a holiday fling.
Food also appears often in Mari’s story. She explores her independence when she collects the feijoa fruit despite knowing that Simon doesn’t like it. Later, she sets out to make a chutney with the feijoa, again knowing her husband dislikes the fruit. Mari thinks about her father as she prepares this chutney, remembering how he taught her to cut fruits and vegetables when she was a child. Finally, when Kit finds her sister and they begin to reconnect, Mari cooks a favorite childhood meal for her.
There are many times when food appears in the novel and times when both Kit and Mari connect food to their father. In these moments, food takes on the symbolism of the father/daughter relationship and reveals the connection Kit and Mari felt with their father despite the trauma that defined their childhoods. At other times, food is symbolic of connection, of an opportunity to share a life with someone. Food is a comfort that allows memories to unfurl and allow a connection to emotions that are sometimes lost with time and distance. Food also represents Mari’s independence from the childhood that left her with trauma and a struggle with addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Sapphire House
Sapphire House is a large home built in the 1930s by a New Zealand actress, Veronica Parker, who made it big in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s. This house sits on a hill above the sea and takes on the color of sapphire as the sun is setting at the end of the day. The house is a favorite of Mari’s and one she expressed interest in during one of her early dates with her husband Simon. As a result, when Veronica’s sister, Helen, the current owner of the home, dies, Simon buys the house for Mari. Immediately, Mari becomes fascinated with finding clues as to the identity of Veronica’s murderer.
Sapphire House is symbolic of Mari’s fantasy of the perfect family. As a child, Kit and Josie created a fantasy family in which the parents were nurturing and attentive, and the children were well adjusted. They lived in a comfortable home where they lived a quiet, safe life. When Josie became Mari, she used bits of this fantasy family to recreate a past for herself, and the purchase of Sapphire House is the culmination of this life she has built. At the same time, Sapphire House saw tragedy when Veronica Parker was murdered in her bedroom at Sapphire House. Mari’s fascination with solving this murder becomes symbolic of the cracks she knows are beginning to show in her fantasy life, and the return of Josie in her memories as Kit arrives in New Zealand to find her.
