The Head

Perhaps the most magical realist element of the novel, the child’s head that Sophia begins seeing shortly before Christmas symbolizes her past, in particular the inner sensitivity and intimacy which she has spent years repressing. It is a shocking image that is given no introduction: “It was the head of a disembodied child, just a head, no body attached, floating by itself in mid air…the size of a cantaloupe…a thick head of hair a couple of inches longer than itself, straggly, rich, dark” (8). Sophia is surprised to find herself unbothered by this strange apparition, instead finding a kind of beauty in it. It is a good child, “sweet and bashful in its ceremoniousness” (9), and she handles it tenderly, not at all in the rough, brusque way that she related to her child Art many years before. It is a second chance at...