I found this story to be the most suspence filled and my favorite thus far.The transitions between past and presnt were clever and as I read it I kept a close eye on the close encounters between Mr.Decuervo and Ellen’s mom. After their first encounter I was sure that Ellens mom was clandestinely cheating on her dad. Yet as the story unfloded I was shocked that the three of them slept in the same bed with Mr. Decuervo cuddled up to the wife of Ellens dad; I believed that here they were clearly entangled in a threesome, yet it was never openly stated by the author. I thought it was funny how young Ellen tried to put it together as Mr.Decuervo’s bed having been broken as an explanation for the three of them being on the same bed. It was a wonderful childhood memory despite the encounter because it reminds us all of how most mothers seem perfect in our eyes with respect to how they take care of us and the routines they make for us to follow. My overall interpretation of the title is that love is not a set object that given to x amount of people, it is insurmountable and extends to thos closest to us.
Wow what an interesting story. When the girl caught Mr Decuervo and the mom hugging each other and her hands was inside Mr Decuervo t shirt. I was like she is cheating on the father, but the way the mother reacted was so shocking to me because she acted normal and not shock. After reading more I realized that the father is fine with it. I think love is not a pie means that a pie needs to be cut in half and serve to people and love cannot be shared but have unique emotion to different people. For example, if there are ten people and one pie we can use knife and cut each piece to each person. With love, I love my mom and my girlfriend but it is a different love and not the same feeling. Overall this story is my favorite out of the three we read so far.
I really loved this story. I love the idea of a woman able to love two men equally, and have never seen it put on paper in a way that was about mutual love, not about sex or jealousy. One of the most interesting concepts in this story is that while the children’s father, who would be the most obvious critic of the mother’s affair, seems fine with it, the daughters are the ones unable to accept, embrace, or even call by his first name their mother’s lover. I also really enjoyed watching this fact about her mother make the daughter realize that her fiance was not the man for her, even though she is unsure whether her mother actions were right or not.
Just like “Farrah” I found this story to be very suspenseful and also very surprising. In the beginning it seemed like she was cheating on Ellen’s dad but later it was reveled that all three of them agreed to this kind of relationship.
“Love is not a pie” tells us that everybody who you love does not get the exact same kind of share (of the pie). The love is experienced and expressed differently by people and between relationships.
Like Farrah, I also believe that this story hints at some sort of sexual relationship between Ellen’s father, Danny and Mr. Decuervo. And thanks Rizwan and Farrah for explaining the metaphor in the title; it left me scratching my head.
I just had another thought. Maybe the author is commenting on how children react to the knowledge that their parents are sexual beings who have an existence and identities that have nothing to do with them. Although most people know on a rational level that their parents engage or have engaged in sexual activity (if only to conceive them), very few people are comfortable uncovering actual evidence of it.
I feel that a sentence in paragraph 5 supports this view. The author refers to her younger sister’s “last naked summer.” Nudity in this context symbolizes innocence and vulnerability. The part of the story in which all three girls strip nude and dance in the rain also hints at this innocence.
What an exciting story! I like the way she used her mothers affair or relationship with both men to explain why she cannot be together with John. I also like the structure of the story how she kept me in suspense about her father being aware of her mothers relationship with Mr. DeCuervo till the end of the story.
I found this short dialogue between Ellen and Lizzie to be very compelling to dig into.
Ellen: “Well, Jesus, I guess so. I mean, I knew…”
Lizzie: “You knew? And you didn’t tell me?”
Ellen: “You were eight or something, Lizzie, What was I supposed to say? I didn’t even know what I knew then.”
Page 19, second paragraph)
Line #1
From four simple lines (no SAT vocabulary words), you can grasp the anxiety and frustration building up between these two sisters. Take a look at the commas in the first sentence. The commas bring the essence of life into the sentence. The pinpoint accuracy makes the sentence breathe. I have read this sentence twenty times, and every time I read it, the short pauses in between just thrills me again and again.
Line #2
The second line is also very critical. It sets the stage up (in terms of mood). It starts off with a short and sweet question which is just like a light jab. Then bam, an unexpected heavy punch comes simultaneously without allowing any recovery time.
Line #3
Then of course the counter attack. She uses age as a reason, then throws in a question that is not meant to be answered, and lastly, “I was naïve” settles the, “Are we still close sisters or what?” debate.
This story when I was done, left me somewhat uncomfortable. When I started reading this piece, I felt the need to keep on going no matter what, just to see what happens throughout the rest of it. The suspense like what Farrah mentioned had me this way. I was completely convinced that the mother was cheating on her husband with Mr. DeCuervo, which to my suprise was not the case at all. What suprised me the most was the fact that the mother was oh so casual about the situation with her daughter, when she got “caught”… I guess she wanted them to know the truth, and that whatever she was doing was “ok”. This was truly not a sexual piece about threesomes or cheating wives,becuse they all were a family. So back to me being uncomfortable about this piece…this story by itself is not something that happens in our everyday lives, and the way it was written seemed so normal for the parents, almost like it was meant to be that way, and that having a woman shared by a husband and a lover who might also be in a relationship with the father baffles me. All in all, it was a very interesting story, I enjoyed it and i hope we have many other pieces that twist and turns our concepts on how the ending would have turned out to be.
This story is quite unusual, it makes one want to read it over to be sure one actually understood the message that has been passed across. At first i thought her mother was just being nice to Mr. DeCuervo, but after reading further i realized it wasn’t a mere friendship but instead it was like an affair. what caught my attention was the fact that the whole situation was okay with her husband. This made it more bizzare. I also find it sad that her mother had to died, because i felt she should have been questioned about the whole situation. I also understand how she felt about marrying john wescott, because no one would have such a strange family and not think twice about it occuring again.
I thought that it was a cute story. The way that she described her memories of the cabin, from the clothes they wore, the types of food they ate, and the music they listened to, really made the memories feel warm. I also felt Ellen’s uneasiness, when she was confused, seeing the three adults sleeping in the same bed, trying to make sense of what she has seen. I was doing the same, and thought, “am I reading this right?” But it did make sense, as I looked back at the close relationship the three adults had. As unconventional as it was, they were a family, all 6 of them in that cabin.
I thought it was interesting how the children were in the dark about the adult’s relationship. The parents had their private world, even at the very end, when Ellen’s father and Mr. Decuervo had their inside joke. There were several of these incidents where Ellen felt alienated, brushed off by the adults when she didn’t understand what they were talking about. Although the adults didn’t think that they were doing anything wrong, they chose to have the children not know.
I thought this story really compelling. I also thought like many of my classmates that the mother was having an affair with Mr. deCuervo and was quite surprised to find out they were having a “menage a trois”. I saw an underlying feeling of sadness at not being able to have what is considered a normal relationship with her fiance
Close Response – PAge 1, 1st Paragraph
The first paragraph was quite interesting. It shows that the narrator comes to a realization point right in the middle of her mother’s funeral. It is her death which makes her realize that. Later in the story, we see how and why this happens.
At first, she describes the funeral as boring and heartbreaking, which means she probably wasn’t seeing anyone she knew well however it was probably a very sad time of her. So she probably had time to think about a lot of things. She comes to realize that she doesn’t actually think her fiance is a good man and she couldn’t see him with her. Especially when the minister says that her mom was “a rare spirit, full of the kind of bravery and joy which inspires others”. SHe thinks about it, that her mom wouldn’t have wanted her to marry him. Since the relationship they have doesn’t seem to be passionate, he seems nothing like her mother was. When the minister announces those qualities, it seems like she realizes it that he doesn’t have those qualities in other words compassion at all. He didn’t even come to the funeral and later on when she breaks up with him, she wishes his reaction would have been more passionate showing he really loves her. If that had been the case she would have stayed with him, but it wasn’t. It also shows he wasn’t what had expected him to be or what she wanted in a life partner.
Also, her mother’s death before expected in a way signifies her unhappiness with the engagement. As if she didn’t want to see her daughter marry that man. It seems this way because, she says she got engaged when her mother was dying and then she died earlier than expected as in before her marriage.
Love is not a pie was just not for me. I felt like it was too long in comparison to our other readings and just didn’t put any kind of emotion in me. The story goes on about the life of these young women enjoying their summers in Maine with jabs here and there about the parents’ love life.
I felt like the story was dull. The story should have at least ended by telling us of the funeral. Nevertheless, it goes to show us that dysfunctional families aren’t that dysfunctional after all.
To me “Love is not a Pie”, took you on a roller coaster ride. It took the reader through different turns that you were not expecting. Well for me at least it led me to belive that the mother was sneaking around when she really wasn’t. It kept the the reader interested and wanting to find out what was going to happen next.
I response to Paul’s posting about Ellen feeling sad at her inability to have a normal relationship with her fiance, I have to disagree. I think that she felt relieved that she was chhosing her wacky family over her normal fince.
i found this story very intresting and i liked many parts of it. one of the parts which caught my eye was the section where lizzie found out about her mothers lover. we can see how gravely this news had affected lizzie, from her reaction when her mom started telling her about Gaucho, her lover.lizzie was crying because this was all new information for her, while it did not make a dent in ellen really, because she had already known about it all from previously; from the time she caught her parents and gaucho in bed together. i just thought it was interesting to see how the two sisters took the news differently.
Love Is Not a Pie was a good story. What really caught my attention was the opening line. While she is sitting at her mother’s eulogy it is awkward that she would be thinking about calling off her wedding. To start the story in the matter that a sad funeral would bring on the idea of calling off a wedding is rather extraordinary. Although when further reading on in the story one comes to realize why she is thinking this and why her mother’s funeral would bring on this idea.
I think this is the best story so far. The alternate look at social norms is amazing. The total disregard for the taboo (and then accepting it as a part of life), is expressed in the the relationship between the mother , father and Mr. Decuervo. The children (mainly Ellen) are exposed to this, but again only Ellen sees it laid out in front of her eyes. When she makes the comment that her husband to be is to normal for her, that is her proclamation of acceptance. She knows her family is abnormal and is completely ok with it.
English 2: Family In Short Fiction 
September 3, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I found this story to be the most suspence filled and my favorite thus far.The transitions between past and presnt were clever and as I read it I kept a close eye on the close encounters between Mr.Decuervo and Ellen’s mom. After their first encounter I was sure that Ellens mom was clandestinely cheating on her dad. Yet as the story unfloded I was shocked that the three of them slept in the same bed with Mr. Decuervo cuddled up to the wife of Ellens dad; I believed that here they were clearly entangled in a threesome, yet it was never openly stated by the author. I thought it was funny how young Ellen tried to put it together as Mr.Decuervo’s bed having been broken as an explanation for the three of them being on the same bed. It was a wonderful childhood memory despite the encounter because it reminds us all of how most mothers seem perfect in our eyes with respect to how they take care of us and the routines they make for us to follow. My overall interpretation of the title is that love is not a set object that given to x amount of people, it is insurmountable and extends to thos closest to us.
September 4, 2008 at 1:01 am
Wow what an interesting story. When the girl caught Mr Decuervo and the mom hugging each other and her hands was inside Mr Decuervo t shirt. I was like she is cheating on the father, but the way the mother reacted was so shocking to me because she acted normal and not shock. After reading more I realized that the father is fine with it. I think love is not a pie means that a pie needs to be cut in half and serve to people and love cannot be shared but have unique emotion to different people. For example, if there are ten people and one pie we can use knife and cut each piece to each person. With love, I love my mom and my girlfriend but it is a different love and not the same feeling. Overall this story is my favorite out of the three we read so far.
September 4, 2008 at 5:11 am
I really loved this story. I love the idea of a woman able to love two men equally, and have never seen it put on paper in a way that was about mutual love, not about sex or jealousy. One of the most interesting concepts in this story is that while the children’s father, who would be the most obvious critic of the mother’s affair, seems fine with it, the daughters are the ones unable to accept, embrace, or even call by his first name their mother’s lover. I also really enjoyed watching this fact about her mother make the daughter realize that her fiance was not the man for her, even though she is unsure whether her mother actions were right or not.
September 4, 2008 at 5:26 am
Just like “Farrah” I found this story to be very suspenseful and also very surprising. In the beginning it seemed like she was cheating on Ellen’s dad but later it was reveled that all three of them agreed to this kind of relationship.
“Love is not a pie” tells us that everybody who you love does not get the exact same kind of share (of the pie). The love is experienced and expressed differently by people and between relationships.
September 4, 2008 at 5:44 am
Like Farrah, I also believe that this story hints at some sort of sexual relationship between Ellen’s father, Danny and Mr. Decuervo. And thanks Rizwan and Farrah for explaining the metaphor in the title; it left me scratching my head.
September 4, 2008 at 6:19 am
I just had another thought. Maybe the author is commenting on how children react to the knowledge that their parents are sexual beings who have an existence and identities that have nothing to do with them. Although most people know on a rational level that their parents engage or have engaged in sexual activity (if only to conceive them), very few people are comfortable uncovering actual evidence of it.
I feel that a sentence in paragraph 5 supports this view. The author refers to her younger sister’s “last naked summer.” Nudity in this context symbolizes innocence and vulnerability. The part of the story in which all three girls strip nude and dance in the rain also hints at this innocence.
September 4, 2008 at 12:04 pm
What an exciting story! I like the way she used her mothers affair or relationship with both men to explain why she cannot be together with John. I also like the structure of the story how she kept me in suspense about her father being aware of her mothers relationship with Mr. DeCuervo till the end of the story.
September 4, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I found this short dialogue between Ellen and Lizzie to be very compelling to dig into.
Ellen: “Well, Jesus, I guess so. I mean, I knew…”
Lizzie: “You knew? And you didn’t tell me?”
Ellen: “You were eight or something, Lizzie, What was I supposed to say? I didn’t even know what I knew then.”
Page 19, second paragraph)
Line #1
From four simple lines (no SAT vocabulary words), you can grasp the anxiety and frustration building up between these two sisters. Take a look at the commas in the first sentence. The commas bring the essence of life into the sentence. The pinpoint accuracy makes the sentence breathe. I have read this sentence twenty times, and every time I read it, the short pauses in between just thrills me again and again.
Line #2
The second line is also very critical. It sets the stage up (in terms of mood). It starts off with a short and sweet question which is just like a light jab. Then bam, an unexpected heavy punch comes simultaneously without allowing any recovery time.
Line #3
Then of course the counter attack. She uses age as a reason, then throws in a question that is not meant to be answered, and lastly, “I was naïve” settles the, “Are we still close sisters or what?” debate.
September 4, 2008 at 5:58 pm
This story when I was done, left me somewhat uncomfortable. When I started reading this piece, I felt the need to keep on going no matter what, just to see what happens throughout the rest of it. The suspense like what Farrah mentioned had me this way. I was completely convinced that the mother was cheating on her husband with Mr. DeCuervo, which to my suprise was not the case at all. What suprised me the most was the fact that the mother was oh so casual about the situation with her daughter, when she got “caught”… I guess she wanted them to know the truth, and that whatever she was doing was “ok”. This was truly not a sexual piece about threesomes or cheating wives,becuse they all were a family. So back to me being uncomfortable about this piece…this story by itself is not something that happens in our everyday lives, and the way it was written seemed so normal for the parents, almost like it was meant to be that way, and that having a woman shared by a husband and a lover who might also be in a relationship with the father baffles me. All in all, it was a very interesting story, I enjoyed it and i hope we have many other pieces that twist and turns our concepts on how the ending would have turned out to be.
September 4, 2008 at 9:05 pm
This story is quite unusual, it makes one want to read it over to be sure one actually understood the message that has been passed across. At first i thought her mother was just being nice to Mr. DeCuervo, but after reading further i realized it wasn’t a mere friendship but instead it was like an affair. what caught my attention was the fact that the whole situation was okay with her husband. This made it more bizzare. I also find it sad that her mother had to died, because i felt she should have been questioned about the whole situation. I also understand how she felt about marrying john wescott, because no one would have such a strange family and not think twice about it occuring again.
September 4, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I thought that it was a cute story. The way that she described her memories of the cabin, from the clothes they wore, the types of food they ate, and the music they listened to, really made the memories feel warm. I also felt Ellen’s uneasiness, when she was confused, seeing the three adults sleeping in the same bed, trying to make sense of what she has seen. I was doing the same, and thought, “am I reading this right?” But it did make sense, as I looked back at the close relationship the three adults had. As unconventional as it was, they were a family, all 6 of them in that cabin.
I thought it was interesting how the children were in the dark about the adult’s relationship. The parents had their private world, even at the very end, when Ellen’s father and Mr. Decuervo had their inside joke. There were several of these incidents where Ellen felt alienated, brushed off by the adults when she didn’t understand what they were talking about. Although the adults didn’t think that they were doing anything wrong, they chose to have the children not know.
September 7, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I thought this story really compelling. I also thought like many of my classmates that the mother was having an affair with Mr. deCuervo and was quite surprised to find out they were having a “menage a trois”. I saw an underlying feeling of sadness at not being able to have what is considered a normal relationship with her fiance
September 8, 2008 at 1:42 am
Close Response – PAge 1, 1st Paragraph
The first paragraph was quite interesting. It shows that the narrator comes to a realization point right in the middle of her mother’s funeral. It is her death which makes her realize that. Later in the story, we see how and why this happens.
At first, she describes the funeral as boring and heartbreaking, which means she probably wasn’t seeing anyone she knew well however it was probably a very sad time of her. So she probably had time to think about a lot of things. She comes to realize that she doesn’t actually think her fiance is a good man and she couldn’t see him with her. Especially when the minister says that her mom was “a rare spirit, full of the kind of bravery and joy which inspires others”. SHe thinks about it, that her mom wouldn’t have wanted her to marry him. Since the relationship they have doesn’t seem to be passionate, he seems nothing like her mother was. When the minister announces those qualities, it seems like she realizes it that he doesn’t have those qualities in other words compassion at all. He didn’t even come to the funeral and later on when she breaks up with him, she wishes his reaction would have been more passionate showing he really loves her. If that had been the case she would have stayed with him, but it wasn’t. It also shows he wasn’t what had expected him to be or what she wanted in a life partner.
Also, her mother’s death before expected in a way signifies her unhappiness with the engagement. As if she didn’t want to see her daughter marry that man. It seems this way because, she says she got engaged when her mother was dying and then she died earlier than expected as in before her marriage.
September 8, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Love is not a pie was just not for me. I felt like it was too long in comparison to our other readings and just didn’t put any kind of emotion in me. The story goes on about the life of these young women enjoying their summers in Maine with jabs here and there about the parents’ love life.
I felt like the story was dull. The story should have at least ended by telling us of the funeral. Nevertheless, it goes to show us that dysfunctional families aren’t that dysfunctional after all.
September 8, 2008 at 10:22 pm
To me “Love is not a Pie”, took you on a roller coaster ride. It took the reader through different turns that you were not expecting. Well for me at least it led me to belive that the mother was sneaking around when she really wasn’t. It kept the the reader interested and wanting to find out what was going to happen next.
September 9, 2008 at 12:59 am
I response to Paul’s posting about Ellen feeling sad at her inability to have a normal relationship with her fiance, I have to disagree. I think that she felt relieved that she was chhosing her wacky family over her normal fince.
September 9, 2008 at 11:54 am
i found this story very intresting and i liked many parts of it. one of the parts which caught my eye was the section where lizzie found out about her mothers lover. we can see how gravely this news had affected lizzie, from her reaction when her mom started telling her about Gaucho, her lover.lizzie was crying because this was all new information for her, while it did not make a dent in ellen really, because she had already known about it all from previously; from the time she caught her parents and gaucho in bed together. i just thought it was interesting to see how the two sisters took the news differently.
September 9, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Love Is Not a Pie was a good story. What really caught my attention was the opening line. While she is sitting at her mother’s eulogy it is awkward that she would be thinking about calling off her wedding. To start the story in the matter that a sad funeral would bring on the idea of calling off a wedding is rather extraordinary. Although when further reading on in the story one comes to realize why she is thinking this and why her mother’s funeral would bring on this idea.
September 25, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I think this is the best story so far. The alternate look at social norms is amazing. The total disregard for the taboo (and then accepting it as a part of life), is expressed in the the relationship between the mother , father and Mr. Decuervo. The children (mainly Ellen) are exposed to this, but again only Ellen sees it laid out in front of her eyes. When she makes the comment that her husband to be is to normal for her, that is her proclamation of acceptance. She knows her family is abnormal and is completely ok with it.