“Betrayal, anger, hatred—Amanda read all of these terrible things on her daughter’s features. And these emotions covered Amanda like a concrete slab over her crypt […] When Lou looked away, she left a ruined mother in her wake.” 

Lou blames her mother for her father’s death. When Amanda slips into a catatonic trance, Lou’s rejection is partially responsible for her malady. For much of the book, Lou denies the possibility that her mother will recover, and she won’t be able to do so until she learns to value her mother, as she did her father. Lou isn’t willing to do this until the end of the story, tracing her character’s development. 

“The choice to be a writer was not the mere selection of an occupation, but rather the choice of an all-consuming lifestyle. And the business of a writer, he carefully pointed out, was the business of life, in both its uplifting glory and its complex frailty.”

Lou aspires to be a writer like her father. However, at the beginning of the novel, she views life in black and white terms. She rejects the frailty of those around her, preferring to be a hard-headed realist. When Lou finally taps into the love she feels for Louisa and Amanda, she taps into her own humanity, and this allows her to become a writer in the truest sense. 

“Lou stared out the window as she held tightly to her brother. Nothing was forever, and didn’t she know that.” 

Early in the story, Lou has taken the stance that she and Oz are alone against the world. She has no desire to form any new emotional attachments because these can so easily be destroyed. It will take a year before she’s ready to emerge from her mistrust of life.