* Spoilers * PF stuff

Some quick musings after a first run through .. Can we take it that Chris is a clone? He says his father told him he'd "engineered" Chris for height; there is no hint whatsoever, as far as I can see, that a mother ever existed. He also describes himself at one point as a "half-human monster", fwiw. We're sort of in 5HC territory here ... but how far can we take that thought? In 5HC the criminal father trains the clone up to be exactly like himself; in PF the mafioso father sends the clone to a monastic school. A big question here is, of course, why did Chris' father do that? Was it because he himself was educated in a monastery, and his agenda was to make of Chris an improved (or, at least, taller) version of himself? Or was it to turn Chris into something completely different from himself? The latter would put an interestingly paradoxical twist on things. The mafioso father wants to keep Chris out of "the life"; God comes along and puts him back in it. So next big question; why would God do that?

There is a hint, but it is sufficiently cagey that it almost suggests the opposite. It is on page 226. Chris is fighting his temptation to go to New Jersey: "I tell myself that if I do not speak to either of them it can do no harm. That may be true, but can I control the urge to speak to them when I see them? [...] What if my father decided not to go to Cuba to run the casino?" etc. So it's seems that one of the "either of them" is his father, and one might assume the other is his mother, but it is not stated, and this omission is suggestive. Who is the other of "them"?

I wasn't thinking. The other of "them" is obviously his younger self. There is no suggestion of a mother, nor even any caginess.

Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote: Who is the other of "them"? *** The other of them is Chris himself.