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Karen Barbour
Vicki is David’s first wife and Nic’s mother. David and Vicki divorce when Nic is three years old, after David falls in love with a family friend. Vicki subsequently moves to Los Angeles and remarries. David and Vicki agree to a custody arrangement whereby Nic spends summers and holidays with Vicki, and the school year with David. Nic begins flying between them alone at five years old, and David worries that their divorce contributed to Nic’s addiction. Vicki loves Nic and shares David’s concern over Nic’s increasing drug use during his teens and twenties, and Vicki also experiences a lot of pain at Nic’s hands. Nic treats his mother much like he treats his father: he breaks into Vicki’s home and steals from her, asks her for money, and rarely heeds her advice about getting help. Thus, Vicki represents another person whose life is severely affected by Nic’s addiction. At the end of the book, Vicki takes a trip to visit Nic when David is also there—even though she and David had spent very little time in the same room for the prior 20 years. This significant gesture of unity and support for Nic makes David hopeful that perhaps another miracle might occur, and Nic might be able to get well.
Vicki Quotes in Beautiful Boy
The Beautiful Boy quotes below are all either spoken by Vicki or refer to Vicki. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introduction
Quotes
Whatever the cause—a genetic predisposition, the divorce, my drug history, my overprotectiveness, my failure to protect him, my leniency, my harshness, my immaturity, all of these—Nic’s addiction seemed to have had a life of its own. I have tried to reveal how insidiously addiction creeps into a family and takes over […] in the hope that readers will recognize a wrong path before they take it. If they don’t, however, I hope they may realize that it is a path they can’t blame themselves for having taken.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25
Quotes
Parents of addicts learn to temper our hope even as we never completely lose hope. However, we are terrified of optimism, fearful that it will be punished. It is safer to shut down. But I am open again, and as a consequence I feel the pain and joy of the past and worry about and hope for the future. I know what it is I feel. Everything.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Beautiful Boy LitChart as a printable PDF.
Vicki Quotes in Beautiful Boy
The Beautiful Boy quotes below are all either spoken by Vicki or refer to Vicki. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introduction
Quotes
Whatever the cause—a genetic predisposition, the divorce, my drug history, my overprotectiveness, my failure to protect him, my leniency, my harshness, my immaturity, all of these—Nic’s addiction seemed to have had a life of its own. I have tried to reveal how insidiously addiction creeps into a family and takes over […] in the hope that readers will recognize a wrong path before they take it. If they don’t, however, I hope they may realize that it is a path they can’t blame themselves for having taken.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25
Quotes
Parents of addicts learn to temper our hope even as we never completely lose hope. However, we are terrified of optimism, fearful that it will be punished. It is safer to shut down. But I am open again, and as a consequence I feel the pain and joy of the past and worry about and hope for the future. I know what it is I feel. Everything.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
