“Why is it that I recall so perfectly the things that happened to me when I was eight years old, and yet trying to remember whether or not I spoke to my colleagues about rescheduling a client assessment for next week is impossible?”

Jules’s difficulty with forming memories is common for those who have experienced severe trauma. Trauma makes the mind unreliable, calling into question much of Jules’s experience as she relates it. Jules, who has not adequately processed her trauma, doesn’t understand why her mind works the way it does.

“No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.”

While no absolute explanation ever appears for why so many women die in the Drowning Pool, Nickie contributes her own perspective: that somehow the people of Beckford absorb the deaths through the water itself. By ingesting the history of these women, the people of Beckford are doomed to repeat that history, trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence.

“Everyone wanted to put it behind them, to get on with things, and there you were, in the way, blocking the path, dragging the body of your dead child behind you.”

Grief and guilt—and how individual people process those emotions—are a significant motif throughout the novel. Louise represents the paragon of grief, of someone who cannot move on, and becomes a nuisance to others because of it. She understands the perception others have of her but refuses or is unwilling to leave her problems behind.