Wish You Were Here

“When I was young, and people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I had a whole plan. […] My father had laughed at my checklist. You, he told me, are definitely your mother’s daughter. I did not take that as a compliment.”

In the protagonist’s own words, this passage gives readers a first look at the kind of person she appears to be—ambitious and meticulous. It also, however, hints at discord in the relationship that Diana has with her mother.

“When it became clear that my mother had dementia, Finn asked me what I was going to do. Nothing, I told him. She had barely been involved in taking care of me when I was young; why was I obligated to take care of her now? I remember seeing the look on his face when he realized that for me, maybe, love was a quid pro quo.”

Diana believes love to involve an equal exchange of sacrifices and compromises. The nature of love is a major theme that the book addresses, and the view of love that Diana expresses here will eventually evolve over the course of the book.

“What I love most about Finn (well, all right, one of the things I love most about Finn) is that he understands that I have a detailed design for my future. He does, too, for his own. Most important, mine and his overlap: successful careers, then two kids, then a restored farmhouse upstate. An Audi TT. A purebred English springer spaniel, but also a rescued mutt. A period where we live abroad for six months. A bank account with enough padding that we don’t have to worry if we need to get snow tires or pay for a new roof. A position on a board at a homeless shelter or a hospital or cancer charity, that in some ways makes the world a better place. An accomplishment that makes someone remember my name.”

To Diana, the foundation of her relationship with Finn is a shared plan of the future. Details of the plan also outline the things that are important to them—professional success and personal ambition; economic security, but also the security of a family; being able to make a difference in the world—thus fleshing out their characters.

“If marriage is a yoke meant to keep two people moving in tandem, then my parents were oxen who each pulled in a different direction, and I was caught squarely in the middle. I never understood how you could march down the aisle with someone and not realize that you want totally different futures. My father dreamed of a family; to him art was a means of providing for me. My mother dreamed of art; to her a family was a distraction. I am all for love. But there is no passion so consuming that it can bridge a gap like that.”

The experience of watching her own parents’ marriage unfold, as well as the impact it had on her, deeply influenced Diana’s views on love. As the narrative unfolds, all of this will invert. Diana will come to realize that family was, in fact, important to her mother. She will also move from being more like her father—using art as a trade and prioritizing her plan for a family—to being more like her mother—changing paths to create art again and abandoning the plan for a family to focus on what brings her joy.

“The Galapagos are a collection of islands flung into the ocean like a handful of gems on velvet. They look, I imagine, the way the world did when it was newly born—mountains too fresh to gentle into slopes, mists spitting in valleys, volcanoes unraveling the seam of the sky. Some are still spiky with lava. Some are surrounded by water that’s a dozy turquoise, some by a dramatic froth of waves. Some, like Isabela, are inhabited. Others are accessible solely by boat, and are home only to the bizarre collection of creatures that have evolved there.”

This vivid description of the Galapagos Islands, which forms the setting for the first part of the book, occurs upon Diana arriving at Isabela. The use of phrases like “newly born” and “dozy turquoise” and the mention of how some islands are uninhabited by humans, help create a feeling of time standing still. There is also a touch of wildness about the setting—the mountains do not “gentle” into slopes, and the waves have a “dramatic froth” to them. The reveal that Diana’s experience on Isabela was, in fact, an imagined one, plays well retrospectively into the painting of the place as one of dream-like wonder—suspended in time and in touch with what is natural.

“The only road out of town winds past cacti and tangled brush and brackish water. Flamingos blush, walking on water, the cursive loops of their necks forming secret messages as they dive for shrimp. At certain points the road narrows and is edged with black stones. At others, it is littered with fallen leaves. Everything is green and red and orange; it is like stepping into a Gauguin. My phone has only one bar the entire time.”

Descriptions of Isabela, narrated in Diana’s voice, contain artistic elements. Shapes and colors are highlighted in noting the flamingos’ “blush” and the “cursive loop” of their necks, and the scene is compared to art by Gaugin—an artist known for his unconventional use of color. Despite the overwhelming beauty of the place, Diana still notes that she is disconnected from the world she is familiar with by paying attention to her phone signal.

“The whole point of traveling with someone from home is to remind you where you came from, to have a reason to leave when you begin to lose yourself in the lights of Paris or the majesty of a safari and think, What if I just stay?”

Diana misses Finn on her first day on Isabela—she desires the security of a familiar place and seems wary of allowing something beautiful to awe and distract her from a set plan. Diana needs an anchor to keep her rooted in what she thinks is the right course, despite what she may truly feel.

“The next semester, instead of signing up for more art studio classes, I filled my time with art history and media and business courses. I did not want to spend my life being compared to my mother, because I was determined to be nothing like her.”

When Diana’s father sees a painting of hers that had been chosen for a student exhibition at her college, he tells her that she has her mother’s eye. Following this, Diana changes courses from art studio to art business. Diana’s motivation for doing so is to break away from everything to do with who her mother is—despite art coming naturally to her, she makes a pointed decision to move away from creating it.

“That was how I learned that the world changes between heartbeats; that life is never an absolute, but always a wager.”

In hearing the news that her father has passed away, Diana explains how she understands for the first time that monumental change can happen in someone’s life within an insignificant amount of time. This foreshadows the kind of change that she herself will undergo, as her experience of the 10-day stint hooked onto a ventilator will significantly alter the course of her life moving forward.

“There is a profound difference between knowing your situation is temporary and not knowing what’s coming next. It’s all about control, or at least the illusion of it.”

During a conversation with Beatriz about feeling stuck on the island, Diana suggests that Beatriz embrace the situation; Beatriz responds that Diana can do so more easily because her situation is temporary, and Diana understands this. Self-awareness is dawning as to why control is important to Diana, and how the feeling of control is nevertheless always an illusion.

“I know I should be grateful to be safe and healthy and in a gorgeous bucket list destination. […] I also know that when you’re in the thick of living your life, you don’t often get to push pause and reflect on it. It’s just really hard to sit in the moment, and not worry if pause is going to turn into stop.”

Diana writes a postcard letter to Finn shortly after conversation she has with Beatriz about feeling stuck on the island. The isolating circumstances that Diana finds herself in are forcing her to “push pause” and “reflect”—this exercise in self-reflection, and the resulting insights from it, are what will eventually drive Diana’s evolution.

“Something blossoms between us, delicate and discomfiting—a silent second start, a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, instead of expecting the worst.”

Gabriel comes to visit Diana to apologize for his earlier rudeness, and their relationship takes a turn. This change directly follows Diana beginning to pause and reflect on her life. Picoult uses the word “discomfiting” because, despite the change in equation being a good thing, it leaves Diana feeling uneasy. The feeling is unexpected and deviates from her plan.

“For so long I’ve known what I want to do and who I want to be when I grow up—I can’t imagine not being an art specialist. […] I will say this, though—sometimes I look at the neon-orange Sally Lightfoot crabs polka-dotting black lava, or the pattern of spots on the back of a ray underwater, and I think: art is everywhere, if you know to look for it.”

In one of Diana’s postcard letters to Finn it becomes obvious that she is changing and adapting. While Diana admits that she cannot yet imagine a different career path for herself, her experiences on Isabela are opening her eyes to this possibility that being an art specialist may not be the only path ahead for her. This foreshadows the way she eventually embraces letting go of her plans and adjusts to a new future.

“My life has been a series of telephone poles one after the other, benchmarks of progress. Without a road map of the steps that come next, I am floundering. I do not belong here, and I cannot shake the feeling that at home, the world is moving on without me. If I can’t get back soon, I might never catch up.”

Upon finding out that the two-week quarantine has been extended indefinitely, Diana is shaken. Although she had been learning to adjust to the circumstances that found her on Isabela, the continuing uncertainty still poses a challenge. In an ironic turn of events, when Diana does eventually “get back,” it is she who has moved on from that world and does not belong in it anymore.

“She has been an absent mother, and now I am an absent daughter. Is that quid pro quo? Do you owe someone only the care they provided for you?”

Where Diana used to firmly believe in “quid pro quo” in relationships, she begins to question it when faced with news of her mother’s illness. The idea that love and relationships transcend the neat balance of a give-and-take is beginning to take shape, and it will influence Diana’s decision to reconnect with her mother, as well as eventually end her relationship with Finn.

“My father’s father fought in World War II, and when he came back from it, he was never quite right. […] As a little girl, I was often told that the war […] created an invisible scar he’d never lose. Once, I asked my grandmother what she remembered about the war. She thought for a long moment, and then finally said, It was hard to get nylons.”

Diana ponders the vastly different experiences that she and Finn are undergoing, and she recalls this anecdote from her childhood. This underlines how the same set of circumstances can be experienced differently by different people, and the subjectivity of lived experience is a major theme in the book.

“The more time I spend on this island, the more clarity I have about the time leading up to it. In a strange way, being stripped of everything—my job, my significant other, even my clothing and my language—has left only the essential part of me, and it feels more real than everything I have tried to be for years. It’s almost as if I had to stop running in order to see myself clearly, and what I see is a person who’s been driving toward a goal for so long she can’t remember why she set it in the first place.”

Diana begins to see how the isolating circumstances she is in are forcing her to reflect on the things in her life, from her relationship to her professional choices. The distance is aiding objectivity and clarity and ties into the theme of isolation being key to adaptation and evolution.

“‘So the million-dollar question is: have you told Finn about your, um, extracurricular excursions?’ ‘He thinks it’s a symptom from Covid, from the sedation on the ventilator.’ Rodney pauses. ‘If it was real…​even just to you,’ he says, ‘you’re going to have to tell him.’”

Diana confides in Rodney about her experience of Isabela and her relationship with Gabriel. Despite that it was imaginary, Rodney’s emphasis on the fact that it felt real to Diana is significant. It highlights the idea that every subjective, lived experience of reality is valid in its own right. 

“I felt like a failure in the hospital, dependent on tubes and medications and IVs and nurses to do every little thing I’ve done independently since I was a child. But here, I’m getting stronger. Here, I’m a survivor. Survivors adapt. I am seized by a mental image of Gabriel gesturing toward a marine iguana.”

As Diana regains control of her body again in rehab, she begins to feel more comfortable in her strange circumstances once again. Just as on Isabela, she needs to adapt and survive once more—and the importance of the former to the latter is underlined here. Picoult points to the symbolism of the Galapagos and the wildlife in how Diana recalls a marine iguana when contemplating adaptation and survival.

“Suddenly he’s standing in front of me, holding out a steaming mug. ‘What’s this?’

‘Hot milk.’

‘I don’t like hot milk,’ I say.

Finn frowns. ‘You drank it the last time you were sick.’

Because he’d made it for me without asking if I wanted it. Because his mom used to make it for him, when he was feeling under the weather. Because I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t grateful.”

Diana and Finn’s relationship is slowly beginning to change. This exchange when back home from the hospital displays how, in the past, Diana operated out of gratitude and obligation rather than honesty with Finn. Part of her evolution on Isabela involved understanding that love is not quid pro quo, and she is slowly becoming more honest with Finn in small ways.

“I move closer and press my palm against hers. There’s a screen between us. Where are you? I wonder. The world that my mother inhabits, it’s not this one. But that’s not to say it isn’t real to her. It might be the first thing we’ve had in common.”

Diana visits her mother at the memory care facility, and for the first time, she feels that they may share something in common after all. Diana’s time on Isabela has opened her to the idea of different experiences being equally valid; this allows her to empathize and reconnect with her mother.

“‘You had a share of white lady problems, but nothing that’s knocked the ground out from under your feet. Until you caught Covid, and now you understand that sometimes shit happens you can’t control.’ […] ‘I have spent a great deal of time pretending to be someone that other people want me to be,’ he says. ‘You don’t need a crystal ball, honey. You need a good hard look at right now.’”

When Diana asks Rodney if she can speak to Rayanne again, Rodney redirects Diana towards an exercise in self-reflection instead. When on Isabela, Diana recognized how isolation was forcing her to reflect and be honest with herself; Rodney reiterates the importance of this by asking Diana to use her experience of having undergone something unforeseen and un-relatable as a mirror to herself and her circumstances.

“I’ve already learned today that caretaking is not a quid pro quo; that if someone neglects you in your past, that doesn’t mean you should abandon them in their future. But does it hold the other way? Finn’s as good as any other reason for why I survived such a bad case of Covid—he tethered me. So what do I owe him, in return? Obligation isn’t love.”

Finn angrily locks himself up in the bedroom when Diana tells him that she went to meet her Covid-positive mother, and Diana reflects on her changed views on love and relationships. Besides having contributed to helping Diana heal her relationship with her mother, this realization—that obligation is not love—will also work to significantly alter Diana’s relationship with Finn.