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Of the romances depicted throughout the novel, which one do you think was the strongest and why?
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I think it’s Mab and Francis. Even though Mab points out they only saw each other a total of a few weeks, the two share a strong bond despite it being brief. I think I feel this way because Quinn portrays Francis as a very mature person. He’s had terrible life experiences and violent physical trauma (like Mab), but he is clear-thinking, intuitive, and compassionate. He is secretive but not in a manipulative way, but rather he’s an observer, a thinker and a listener. And Mab heals her past trauma because of his love and respect for her. She learns to open up and to be curious and care for him too, despite her initial motivations for marrying him being selfish and self-serving. I think they would have been a happy family had there not been the terrible tragedy.
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I think the romance between Beth and Harry was the strongest because they had the most in common – two brilliant minds in sync with code-breaking. It was almost as if they shared their own private language and understood each other fully They had mannerisms in common, like staring into space, as Harry’s wife Sheila noted. Significantly Sheila gave the relationship her blessing. Harry wouldn’t leave his wife because both were devoted to their handicapped son. Beth wasn’t looking for a husband. In her notes, Quinn explains that Harry was based on 2 Bletchley Park codebreakers, one of whom was Keith Bately, who fell in love with Mavis Lever. Quinn based Beth on Lever and one other woman who ended up in the asylum. In fact Bately and Lever married in Nov., 1942.
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