Annie is a despicable sociopath bitch
I mean the book character. Her counterpart movie character is somehow bearable. I didn't like her book character right from the first pages, and grew to hate her more as I read on.
To be fair, Annie did a lot to help Grace and Pilgrim heal, but IMO that is not only outweighed, but eventually erased totally by her cruelty and insensitivity toward others. She put so much efforts to have Grace healed, and then threw everything to garbage because her needs were more important to her. Grace nearly died because of her.
First of all, she was a tyrant. She bossed everyone around nonstop, at home and at work. That's Annie: she does not try to reason and get people agree with her. Instead she makes decisions for others, because she is on the top of the world, she knows better than others. For instance, she wouldn't even try to persuade Grace gently to make the journey, not to convince her it would help her recover. In that case her intention was good, but it was consistent with her otherwise negative behavior. No wonder Grace was so hostile during the ride. Wouldn't it be better if she came along willingly?
Morever, she wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Now, being assertive and standing on your own is not negative - but when you give orders to everyone and don't care that others have needs and feelings, nor do you care about inconvenience you cause - this is negative. This is Annie. Tom realized that very quickly, on their first phone conversation: she asked him to come over and see Pilgrim, and he sensed it was not a request but an order.
Not only that, but she has been terrorizing her family. Even the nanny was terrified of her, and wouldn't dare to be present when Annie is around:
Since the spring however, when Annie had taken on this new job, things had become strained. The office bloodletting had made her irritable and more than usually critical. Grace too, and even Elsa [the nanny], had noticed the change and watched themselves when Annie was around. Elsa looked relieved nowadays when it was he rather than Annie who got home first from the office. She would quickly hand over messages, show him what she had cooked for dinner and then hurry off before Annie arrived.Annie has been neglecting Grace for years. She was fully aware that she was repeating what her mother did to her, she remembered well how it had affected her, but instead of breaking the pattern - she followed it. Until Grace could not take it anymore:
"What the hell do you care!' she screamed. 'You decide! You always do! You pretend you care what other people want but you don't, it's just bu****it!"I liked those outbursts. It was not what a spoilt brat would say, but an offended child would, after years of neglect. These two above sentences sum up Annie's negative personality very accurately.
"No why? Huh? Because you care? Or just because you have to know everything and control everything and not let anybody do anything unless you say so! Is that it?"
Annie admitted she never loved Robert. To her, their marriage was a commercial transaction: Robert gave her a secured life and unconditioned love, and in return she... didn't cheat on him. Wow, how nice and generous of her. Even that she had to take away from him!
She told him [Tom] about meeting Robert and how he'd seemed so clever and dependable, so grown up and yet so sensitive. And he was still all of those things, a fine, fine man. Their marriage had been good, still was, in many ways. But looking back now, she realized that what she'd wanted from him was actually what she'd lost in her father: stability, security and unquestioning love. These Robert had given her spontaneously and without condition. What she had given him in return was loyalty.Maybe Robert's mild temper is part of the problem: I don't mean he should have been abusive husband, but if he had more backbone, wouldn't allow Annie to boss him and Grace nonstop, maybe Annie would not take him for granted and think twice before cheating on him.
"I don't mean by that I don't love him," she said. "I do. I really do. It's just that it's a love that feels more like, I don't know. Like gratitude or something."
Annie's sociopath nature becomes very clear in the end of chap. 34:
"And Grace? You think you can tell Grace?"Annie was not some teenager whose mind was raging with hormones. She was an adult, with responsibility. She should have restrained herself, if not for Robert then for Grace. But no. Only a total monster, an insensitive cruel monster, could have said something like that - that the pain would be for others. That's Annie. Who cares about Grace, about Robert? So what if Grace has just recovered? Not Annie. Annie is in the center of the world. All the other people should serve her, satisfy her needs, and if someone else (Robert, Grace) gets hurt... *beep* him/her.
She peered at him [Tom], searching his eyes. Why was he doing this? She'd hoped for validation and he'd proffered only doubt, thrusting at her immediately the one issue she'd dared not confront. And now Annie realized that in her deliberation she'd resorted to that old self-shielding habit of hers and rationalized it: of course children were upset by these things, she'd told herself, it was inevitable; but if it was done in a civilized, sensitive way there need be no lasting trauma; neither parent was lost, only some obsolete geography. In theory Annie knew this to be so; more than that, the divorces of several friends had proven it possible. Applied here and now, to them and Grace, it was of course nonsense.
"But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it."
"But for us it wouldn't be pain and suffering."
Tom was not much better person. I hated his character as much as I hated Annie. His marriage was rash and foolish deed. Nothing good came out of that, only pain for him and Rachel. Morever:
He'd conducted this area of his life till now with the simple notion that if a man and a woman felt the same way about each other they should act on it. Okay, so she was married. But that hadn't always stopped him in the past, unless the husband was either a friend or potentially homicidal.In other words, Tom was a womanizer scumbag with no respect for marriage and wouldn't care about hurting the families of the women he had affairs with. Since Robert didn't fit any of the above categories, it was OK for Tom to sleep with Annie. He and Annie truly deserve each other. It was decent of him to tell Annie their deeds would hurt others - but he said that after, not before, they spent several days together having sex. If he had even a bit of conscience, he'd say that earlier and restrained himself.
Annie and Tom decided to break up, but the damage has already been done: Diane discovered what they did, talked about that, and Grace overheard her. Annie proved to be dead wrong (no pun intended) about Grace's reaction. She took it very severely:
Now, as he [Pilgrim] stood drinking at the plateau pool, she [Grace] felt her fury not lessen but distill. She slicked his sweating neck with her hand and saw again in her head those two guilty figures slinking one by one from the dark of the barn, like dogs from a butcher's yard, thinking themselves unseen and unsuspected. And then her mother, with her makeup smeared by lust and still flushed from it, sitting there calmly at the wheel of the car and asking, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, why she felt sick.Well, Grace did not take it so easily and mildly as Annie expected, did she? I think part of it was that Grace developed feelings for Tom, but what hurt her mostly was that her mother committed an adultery, with total disregard to Grace's and Robert's feelings. Grace almost got herself killed, though not the way she planned: she and Pilgrim encountered a herd of wild horses. Luckily, Tom arrived in time to save them.
And how could Tom do this? Her Tom. After all that caring and kindness, this was what he was really like. It had all been an act, a clever excuse for the two of them to hide behind. It was only a week, a week for Godsake, since he'd stood chatting and laughing with her dad. It was sick. Adults were sick. And everyone knew about it, everyone. Diane had said so. Like a bitch in heat, she said. It was sick, it was all so sick.
Grace looked over the plateau and beyond the ridge to where the first pass curved up like a scar into the mountains. Up there, in the cabin where they'd all had such fun together on the cattle drive, up there, that's where they'd done it. Soiling, spoiling the place. And then her mother lying like that. Making out she was going there all alone to 'get her head together'. Jesus.
Well, she'd show them. She had the matches and she'd show them. It would go up like paper. And they would find her charred black bones in the ashes and then they'd feel sorry. Oh yes, then they'd feel sorry.
But after Tom got Grace and Pilgrim to safety, how did he handle the situation? By the coward's way: committed a suicide. Grace saw it very clearly: Tom had no reason to step to the wild stallion. He knew better than that. He deliberately allowed the wild horse to kill him. It disgusted me so much: you know you did something bad, so face the consequences like adult and try to make amends. What a coward.
The ending upset me most of all: how nice of Annie to admit the child she was carrying was not Robert's. She did not have any remorse or regret for the pain she caused Robert and Grace, not even the slightest guilt for nearly causing Grace to commit a suicide. She did not even feel need to apologize. Why should she? She is in the center of the world, and everyone else is negligible. So cruel and consistent of her.
Robert's behavior is what I found unbelievable: didn't he have some self-esteem? Couldn't he be just a bit angry at his bitch unfaithful wife?! To be willing to forgive is positive, but even that has limits. Annie not only hurt him, the man who loved her so much and always has been for her - she nearly drove their daughter to commit a suicide! How can anyone forgive and condone that?!
Robert's reaction was turning the other cheek. Instead of divorcing Annie and severing any contact with her, he visits her often, every time delaying his departure. Annie was certain he would return to her. After all, he has always been her abject slave. Nothing has changed.
I've read on this board posts of people who find Annie's book character adorable. How can anyone like the book character? share