Magnolia Parks

“The physical distance between us is meagre, but somehow still a forest grows between. Pine trees of mistakes so tall we can’t see over them and rivers of things we didn’t say so wide we can’t get around.”

Instances of figurative language are sparing in the novel, but this image establishes the many obstacles that lie between Magnolia and BJ. The passage also offers an example of the clipped prose and direct language that mark Hastings’s style; she also frequently uses short and fragmented sentences to heighten tension and represent the unruly emotions that dominate the plot.

“I want to kiss him forever, but I can’t because he broke forever and still I fight the urge to kiss him anyway.”

This anguished statement establishes Magnolia’s ambiguous feelings about BJ, establishing the novel’s primary conflict. She is still hurt by BJ’s infidelity, but rather than moving forward with her life, she finds herself mired in her longing for his presence. Unable to move past her love and attraction to him, she makes a series of erratic decisions that are fueled by this maelstrom of unresolved emotion and conflict.

“Have you ever had someone stare you dead in the eyes and wearing all the ways you hurt them?”

BJ’s awkward rhetorical question represents yet another example of Hastings’s tendency to have her characters address the reader directly, thereby making the narrative feel like a confidential conversation. This passage also highlights the fact that despite his outward callousness, he does feel guilt over hurting Magnolia, and that guilt continues to motivate his self-destructive behaviors.

“Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.”

Magnolia’s reflection captures her philosophy about BJ, acknowledging the combination of hurt and attraction that provides the driving force of the novel. This declaration to the reader is ironic in that Magnolia pretends to be worldly and wise when in reality, she is far from being a self-aware or mature adult.

“He’s crushed. He’s crushed he’s crushed me. This is an old dance we do. A ritual, almost. Breaking our hearts open on the altar of each other.”

The central premise of this troubled love story is that even as Magnolia and BJ cannot prevent themselves from hurting one another, they also cannot bring themselves to stay apart. As a result, they resignedly conclude that they are fated to cause each other pain. The image of the altar hints at the special, almost sacred importance of the pair’s love and attraction for one another, even as their interactions take on the sinister attributes of an unhealthy, cult-like “ritual.”

“Him with the starry eyes and the hair I love to knot my hands up in. The most beautiful boy in every room, the great love of my life—how many loves do you get in a lifetime? I remember wondering that.”

In this passage, the author introduces the question that reveals the novel’s broader philosophical scope. By asking how many loves one person can have in a lifetime, Magnolia uses grand, romantic language to characterize her feelings for BJ in an attempt to elevate her emotions beyond the pettier realms of fixation and infatuation.

“Everything wonderful, everything magical, everything painful, everything beautiful and spectacular and wretched and defining that has happened to me has happened with him. And I hate him for that.”

The language of this passage emphasizes that Magnolia believes BJ to be foundational to her life. Because she has known him from an early age and fell in love with him when they were both still young, his presence in her life has taken on outsized and almost mythic proportions, and this paradoxical blend of love and hate continues to drive the novel’s dramatic action.

“Then the world goes to black. We lock eyes. And this sheet of impenetrable glass slides up from the ground between us. We can’t touch and we can’t talk and there’s nothing to say anyway besides him screaming through the glass that he misses me and me screaming back that I miss him too and him screaming that he’s sorry and me screaming that it’s not enough.”

This interaction occurs when Magnolia sees BJ hitting on a woman at a club. The passage uses the image of the sheet of glass to represent the barrier that exists between them now: a barrier caused by BJ’s infidelity, which broke her trust. The wish to be together and the declarations of love and attachment are therefore obstructed by the hurtful behaviors that each character displays.

“Do you know what it’s like to lose you how I lost you? […] Those first few weeks after what happened and we were over, every time I closed my eyes I saw you with another girl. Every girl. Every girl in the world except for my sister and Paili […] trying to imagine what the fuck they did for you that I couldn’t do.”

This passage is a significant moment in Magnolia’s character arc because she is finally honest with BJ about how deeply his infidelity has wounded her. Additionally, the moment also contains a note of irony, for Paili does indeed turn out to be the one with whom BJ cheated. The eventual discovery of this fact highlights The Dynamics of Loyalty and Betrayal on multiple levels.

“It was like my head was out of the water and the rest of me was under it and I was walking against the current to do it. Every touch, every grab, every kiss, every motion, the current of the entire universe was telling me not to do it and I fucking did it anyway, and now not just she knows it but everyone knows, that not only did I lose the girl we all know I love, I lose her and it’s all my fault.”

BJ reflects on the incident in which he cheated on Magnolia and feels as though he has been pulled by a current, even if he knew better; the passage therefore establishes that BJ’s chief character flaw is his lack of impulse control. His self-blame is amplified when Magnolia reveals his cheating, causing the news to become gossip.

“I remember looking around at the group of people assembled in front of me, piled on my bed in a hotel room I ran away to in Paris with my boyfriend, and thinking—maybe they’re what family actually is. Maybe they’re the ones who have been my family all along.”

This passage plays on the themes of family, love, and loyalty, suggesting that the friends who helped Magnolia celebrate her 16th birthday are more like a family than her parents, who forgot the date entirely. The depth of attachment among the friend group is also an ongoing source of conflict as many love triangles develop.

“My heart breaks for this girl; if Sam England was her BJ, and how he’s gone in a way where there’s no far away hope that maybe you’ll be okay again and you’ll work it out one day when he stops fucking everything and you can stomach the idea of trusting him again, then she must be a shell of a person and the bones of her heart must be entirely broken.”

Magnolia’s moment of compassion for Clara England mostly reflects her own feelings about her attachment to BJ, and the image of broken bones recurs as she expresses how deeply his infidelity hurt her. The pain of unrequited and tormented love plays out across several different romantic relationships in the novel.

“He never really forgave me. He might have been the one who ended it, but it was my fault and he’s held it against me ever since.”

Magnolia’s tangled relationship with Christian—specifically, her affection for him and his inability to move on—is an echo and an amplification of the other tangled relationships in the novel, representing a further commentary on the unruliness of passion. The novel presents the inability to let go as a sign of the depth and strength of the attachment in question, but Christian’s need to separate from Magnolia foreshadows her mirroring need to break up with BJ at the end of the novel.

“I’ve taught myself to live within the walls of our weird touching—it’s dysfunctional as shit, I know, but if being with her was heroin, what we have now is methadone. The shit isn’t the same, but it keeps the monsters at bay.”

It is emblematic of BJ’s deepest character flaws that he equates his feelings for Magnolia as a type of addiction. In his mind, the physical touch they continue to engage in after their breakup is an attempt to keep fulfilling their emotional need for one another. His analogy shows the insufficiency of this approach even as it indirectly references his ongoing issues with literal substance abuse—yet another sticking point in their erratic relationship.

“BJ and I—I think we’re like a fine-chain gold necklace all tangled. Not impossible to undo but it feels like it is. You can sometimes manoeuvre the chain free of itself but […] Most of the time you have to undo it at the clasp or break it completely for the knots to come undone.”

This image of the tangled necklace represents Magnolia’s belief that she can never be independent of BJ. This particular image indirectly references the signet ring that she wears around her neck as a sign of her ongoing attachment, and it also connotes wealth and luxury, reflecting her familiarity with and fondness for expensive material objects.

“Our eyes lock. She’s the deer and I’m the wolf and there’s a massive truck headed right for us in the middle of a dark night.”

This image capture the fact that BJ believes himself to be a predator whenever he is with Magnolia, for he often senses and exploits her vulnerability. However, the disruptive image of the oncoming truck foreshadows the disastrous nature of their connection, implying that the two are headed for a ruinous collision from which they may never recover. Additionally, because BJ feels trapped by uncontrollable circumstances, he attempts to smother his painful feelings with alcohol, sex, and substance abuse.

“Tom picks up my Paddington Bear that I’ve had all my life and tugs at his ear. It makes me feel funny because the only other person who I’d ever let him hold is Beej and Tom’s holding him now and maybe that means something.”

The Paddington Bear is an important emblem of Magnolia’s childhood, and BJ’s tattoo of Paddington is a direct reference to this sentimental image. However, when Tom holds the bear, the moment indicates the confusion of Magnolia’s feelings about which romantic partner to choose. The awkwardness of her reflections in this moment indicates her youthful outlook and fundamental immaturity.

“If I loved myself more than I love her, I would have cut the ties between us as soon as she started to strangle me with them. If I loved me more I would have let me drift away, into the dark, out of her light, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t and I won’t because when it comes to her, I have zero instinct for self-preservation. I’ll die in her arms or at her doorstep trying to get back into them.”

BJ’s inner monologue captures a moment of self-awareness about his destructive tendencies. He believes that his inability to let go of Magnolia is evidence that he loves her more than he cares for himself. This dramatization of their attraction in grand, fated terms recurs frequently, and the author deliberately romanticizes the relationship’s intensity and the pain that the two protagonists cause each other.

“She’s either their darling or their slut and there’s no telling which she’ll be on which day.”

BJ’s callous remark touches on the theme of celebrity and Magnolia’s self-consciousness about how she is perceived. Their status as celebrities is referenced throughout the novel, but in the end, this aspect of their lives merely serves to suggest Magnolia’s core need for attention and approval.

“The real public fascination with Beej and I began when we stopped being something that made sense to them.”

This passage captures one of the infrequent moments in which Magnolia considers the drawbacks involved with the attention she receives from the press. Most of the time, she takes advantage of her status, dressing to draw attention or using the gossip magazines to get back at BJ, but in this section of the novel, The Costs of Celebrity Status becomes something of a hindrance.

“[BJ’s kiss] makes my heart feel like it’s carrying around a diamond in its pocket and that nothing, no time or heartache or infidelities have passed between us, and maybe this is how we’ll always be—stuck together, drifting back to each other if we somehow pull apart. I hope that’s what we’ll be like. I hope we’ll always find our way back.”

Magnolia’s hope of resuming her relationship with BJ expresses the push and pull of their attraction, and this dynamic drives most of the dramatic action. However, this passage also foreshadows the pair’s reconciliation under the willow tree.

“[BJ] was your saving grace. He…looks at you and sees the sun. So, you were covered. You didn’t need a dad, you had a BJ.”

Even as the narrative explores the nature of found family, it also examines the relationships amidst families of origin and suggests that Magnolia’s need for BJ’s attention is a replacement for the affection that she never received from her parents. At a different point in the novel, Tom echoes BJ’s assertion that Magnolia is the sun, and this repetition demonstrates that others are aware of the central role that Magnolia and BJ play in each other’s lives.

“Of course we’re going to work, even if I’m a round peg and he’s a square hole—I don’t care, I’ll shave down the edges of myself to keep him.”

This images hints that Magnolia is aware that her love for BJ is destructive. However, like him, she will continue to pursue the relationship because she has developed a need for both the pleasure and the pain their interactions cause. Ultimately, both characters feel that their need for the other is stronger than their need for self-preservation.