Strange Sally Diamond

“My mum used to ask me to play this game in my head. To imagine what other people were thinking. It was a curious thing. Isn’t it easier to ask them what they think? And is it any of my business? I know what I think.”

Sally has a hard time relating to other people. Her mother’s trick of imagining what other people are thinking is designed as a game to help Sally consider other people’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This quote emphasizes Sally’s social isolation, her detachment from others, and her protective nature, as her inability to understand what other people are thinking is also her own defense against other people trying to know what she is thinking.

“I knew by then that trying to burn Dad’s body was the wrong thing to do. Everyone had told me so. When I am told something once clearly, without jokes or ambiguity, I understand completely. You’d think it was something I’d been doing for years, casually burning bodies, the way they went on about it. It was one body, and he had told me to do it, more or less.”

Sally is fully capable of understanding right from wrong. She only needs clear instructions to understand a situation. She made the unfortunate choice to burn her father’s body herself because of a misunderstanding. From her perspective, her father’s joking suggestion that she throw him out with the trash was a literal instruction: one that she did her best to fulfill out of respect for what she perceived to be his last wishes. This quote highlights one of Sally’s key differences while simultaneously establishing that she is not an inherently cruel or evil person. She simply needs to be taught differently and given clear instructions. This quote also emphasizes that although she understands that she shouldn’t have tried burning her father’s body, she still doesn’t understand why other people would be so horrified by the act.

“You are you. As unique and different as every other person on the planet. Your oddities are not disabilities (although we call them disabilities to get your welfare allowance), they are mere quirks of your personality. You don’t like talking on the phone and I don’t like cauliflower. Are we so different?”

Thomas knows Sally well, and he is also an expert in psychology. He encourages Sally not to internalize society’s judgments, emphasizing that although Sally is different, she is still human. Thomas’s point is that perceived differences aren’t that strange under close consideration. Ultimately, it is society’s lack of compassion or even tolerance for differences that endangers Sally. Furthermore, this quote champions the fact that people who are different are still fully capable of pursuing meaningful lives in the community.

“In the outside world, you will find more people who are kind than people who are not. Seek them out.”

Sally has long been afraid of people beyond her home because she expects them to treat her with cruelty, as they have often done in the past. She also has her own difficulties in connecting with and relating to other people, so believing in other people’s capacity for kindness is challenging. However, this quote also foreshadows how important it will be for Sally to extend herself, challenge herself, and meet new people.

“Occasionally I would hear noises coming from behind the other door. Often the sound of crying or howling. Dad said that’s where he kept the ghost, and that I mustn’t worry because she could never get out. And he was right, because she never did. But the noise could be frightening sometimes.”

This quote depicts the sounds of Denise being trapped and abused in the room next door to Peter, who is too young to understand what is happening at this point in the novel. This quote exemplifies Nugent’s use of implication to build tension and mystery throughout the novel. The passage also foreshadows Peter’s future struggle with his mental health due to the fears he experiences as a child.

“I feel now that it was a crude and possibly cruel thing to do, but we were concerned for your future. I was convinced that you were young enough to be retrained, as it were, and that you might have a chance at a normal life.”

This note from Thomas reveals his guilt at separating Denise and Sally from each other, for the decision led to Denise’s death by suicide. Thomas had good intentions to help Sally, but in practice, he failed both Sally and Denise in important ways. This quote highlights Thomas’s belief in Sally, but it also outlines the fact that his concern for her future causes him to enable her antisocial behavior, thereby holding her back from developing a more community-oriented life.

“‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re a nutcase, but you’re our nutcase.’ She laughed, and I laughed because she was right and it was nice to feel that I belonged to someone.”

Nadine and Angela’s decision to help and embrace Sally plays a key role in aiding Sally’s progress. Without parents, Sally is now alone in the world. Angela and Nadine provide comfort and human connection, accepting Sally for all of her flaws. This makes Sally feel included, and being part of a family is important to Sally’s future. This quote emphasizes the important role that secondary characters like Angela and Nadine play in Sally’s character development.

“I began to explore my emotions. I found that I was angry, resentful, hurt, and anxious as well as grateful, warm, kind, considerate, and lonely. Tina said that trust was my number one issue, but that given my background, it was entirely reasonable. I liked that. I was reasonable.”

Sally’s confrontation and acknowledgement of her many layers of emotions in therapy is key to her character development. She has spent decades avoiding her emotions. Now, as she learns to process her past memories and current patters, dealing with her emotions helps her to gain new connections in her community. Sally’s myriad feelings reflect the universal human experience, and her trust issues are rational due to her childhood trauma. Here, Tina actively seeks to validate Sally’s emotions in order to reassure her that her approach to the world is a reasonable one, and it is significant that Sally latches onto the word “reasonable” as a descriptor of her identity.

“In the beginning, the stretching and bending felt unnatural, but I got used to it. I knew that centering myself and getting in touch with my body was calming when I was faced with difficult situations.”

Yoga represents a positive step in Sally’s character transformation. She has long ignored her well-being, both physically and mentally. Yoga and meditation therefore help Sally get back in touch with her core self. The world may be chaotic, but she learns to control her breath and movements to work through her reactions to that chaotic world. This quote thus demonstrates Sally’s process of empowerment.

“That was the day I decided to move house. I didn’t like to feel unsettled on my own. For the first time in my life, I wanted to be around people.”

Sally’s character development evolves dramatically over the course of the novel and this quote reflects her own growing understanding of her inner need for change and connection. For decades, she isolated herself from other people. Her desire to be around people is a major sign of significant transformation. Sally’s development with her relationship to other people is also a commentary that Nugent develops to emphasize the importance of community.

“I heard Tina out, but I worried that maybe those buried feelings could emerge one day, that I wouldn’t be able to control them. Most days, I could put it all to the back of my mind, but that churning anger was becoming more and more fiery.”

Sally’s major internal conflict revolves around the issue of her repressed memories. Her brain has forgotten the past before Thomas and Jean’s adoption of her because her mind formed a necessary survival tactic to protect her from further devastation. However, because repressed memories are not permanently erased, Sally constantly vacillates between her desire to confront those memories and the fear that they will reappear when she is unprepared to deal with them. These repressed memories are therefore a constant threat to Sally’s well-being: a threat that manifests as dangerously intense anger.

“Dad wasn’t remotely sympathetic to her. If he was right about everything, why were we living with new histories and new names on the other side of the world?”

Peter is traumatized by the manipulation and emotional abuse of his father. He doesn’t yet understand the damage that his father wreaks on others, but he does recognize that his father extends no sympathy to other people. The question posed in this quote reflects Peter’s burgeoning sense of right versus wrong. The question is a logical one that implies Conor’s guilt, though Peter isn’t yet fully aware of it.

“He told me that if we let her go, we’d both go to prison. He reminded me that I wouldn’t survive the arrest because the police would manhandle me. I would die in terrible agony. He acted like he had kidnapped this girl to do me a huge favor, to give me a friend. But why a girl?”

This quote emphasizes Conor’s masterful manipulation of Peter. Conor has forced Peter into internalizing lies about the family, laying the foundation of emotional abuse. In essence, Conor has created a structure for Peter in which Conor can get away with anything. Peter cannot hold Conor responsible because he is so deeply influenced by Conor’s lies. This quote highlights both the manipulation of the fake disease as well as the fallacy that Conor is a good father who only does illegal and cruel things for Peter’s sake. Thus, this false narrative is designed to place responsibility on Peter and absolve Conor in the eyes of his son.

“My mother was another Lindy. I remembered all the things she had said to me. She was eleven when he had kidnapped her. I remembered my little sister, Mary. What had happened to them? Lindy was telling the truth.”

Lindy’s abduction and abuse forces Peter to confront the truth about his mother and to recognize that he has internalized Conor’s misogyny to the point that he was unable to feel empathy for his own mother. Now, Peter is older and has learned through other experiences that women are not inherently evil. His attraction to Lindy forces him to question his father’s past behavior patterns when interacting with women and girls. Lindy’s presence therefore accelerates Peter’s character development.

“Anger is a secondary emotion. Rage can be sparked by fear or any emotion where we feel vulnerable or helpless. But now you’re an adult, you’re not locked in a room. You can use different powers. You can use your voice and you can walk away.”

Tina’s advice to Sally about the nature of anger and her ability to control her emotions increases Sally’s character development even as it reflects Nugent’s larger commentary on the nature of anger and its hidden gifts. Sally’s anger is important because it helps her to be aware of her environment and protect herself in ways that she could not achieve as a child.

“And yet, I do not feel free of him. My life has been blighted and destroyed.”

This quote captures Peter’s deep-seated trauma and the long-lasting effects of such trauma on the human psyche. Peter is free of his father’s influence, even after Conor’s death. Peter’s life was ruined by Conor because he inherited Conor’s proclivity for sexual abuse. Peter is deeply lonely and wholly alone in the world because of the cycles of abuse that began with Conor. Significantly, however, his awareness of the damage that Conor has done to him also gives rise to an all-consuming resentment that prevents him from taking responsibility for his own crimes and abuses.

“I was fed up with people disparaging my dad. He might not have done everything he should have, but what he did do, he did for the right reasons.”

Sally struggles to understand people’s criticism of her late father, Thomas. For Sally, her father had long been her champion and her safe place. Thomas did for Sally what many other people were unable to do, including Sally’s biological grandparents. Sally has a difficult time understanding that people are multi-layered and can contain both virtues and flaws. This confusion turns into frustration with those who point out Thomas’s flaws in the course of expressing their own understanding of the truth.

“Once again, I took away the chain, and she was full of gratitude. I felt like a monster. That’s the word my mother used to refer to my father. I remembered that.”

Peter struggles with the evil lessons he has learned from his father. Although he is capable of kindness, his kindness only finds expression within the boundaries of his abusive behavior, which he refuses to acknowledge. In this quote, Nugent makes Peter’s internal conflict evident as he sees himself as a monster and recognizes the connection between his father’s behavior and his own.

“As I gradually rose through the ranks and found myself on interviewing panels, I tried to hire every Māori applicant I could. The casual racism of the past was now rightfully seen as shameful. Māori culture was being embraced by the Pākehā population.”

This quote provides another example of the ways in which Peter tries to use virtue signaling and moral decision-making to maintain his fallacious belief in his own essential goodness. Peter believes that he can somehow compensate for Rangi’s death by quietly advocating for the Māori people through hiring initiatives. He tries to convince himself that he is not a bad person because he is not racist like his father was, even though the broad scope of his adult decisions prove that he is just as much of a criminal and an abuser as his father was.

“Lindy seemed to have forgotten that she had been kidnapped. I didn’t want to remind her. And I guessed she might behave strangely around other people. No, Lindy was mine. I did not dare to share her with the outside world. I was happier than I had ever been. So was she.”

Lindy becomes submissive to Peter because as time goes on, she gives in to the tragedy of her situation. She has fought for years but eventually submits because Peter has such a tight hold over her life. In this quote, Peter makes himself feel better by noting that Lindy acts as though she wasn’t kidnapped. This shift allows Peter to delude himself into believing that Lindy loves him. In this way, he seeks to avoid all accountability of her abduction and continued captivity. This quote also emphasizes Peter’s obsession with Lindy and his need to keep her sequestered from the world so that she will be his alone.

“We clashed over that. Despite everything Conor Geary had done, Peter felt loved by him, as if that canceled out the horror he had visited on our mother, on me, and on Peter himself with this terrible story of a deadly disease.”

Peter’s defense of his father is indicative of the traumatic brainwashing that Peter has endured. However, Peter also defends his father because he has inherited Conor’s dangerous proclivities and lack of empathy; in defending Conor, Peter is actually defending himself by implication. Peter remains loyal to Conor even though the evidence of Conor’s crimes is so damning. Even though Peter himself was victimized by Conor, he insists on humanizing his father in order to humanize himself in his own eyes.

“Over the following weeks, I noted that Peter was as antisocial as I used to be. I could empathize with him. He seemed so alone in the world, but he was never aggressive or threatening in any way.”

Sally sees a part of herself in Peter, but this is partly wishful thinking because she wants to forge a connection with her brother. Peter and Sally are both antisocial because of their past traumas and their self-isolation. This opens a point of empathy for Sally because for the first time she can truly understand what someone else is going through. However, there is a key difference between the two siblings. Sally believes that Peter does not share her tendency to be aggressive or threatening, but in reality, he is far more insidiously dangerous than Sally could ever be.

“I realize now that the only way to make that connection I seek is to take a woman and keep her until she submits. I’m prepared to wait. I won’t force her to love me. I haven’t found her yet. She won’t be a child. I’m not my father.”

Peter’s narrative ends with a foreshadowing of his intentions to continue abducting and abusing women, all the while believing that he is not as bad as his father. Just as Conor remains Peter’s only role model in life, Peter has never learned how to make real connections with healthy people who are free. Thus, he is desperate for any form of connection and leans into his learned cycle of abuse as a way of achieving it. This quote emphasizes the insidious nature of cyclical violence and trauma.