When I "take everything seriously" as I mention doing the stories get deeper and deeper. Taking each detail seriously doesn't mean that I feel obligated to use it, or to use it in its original form, but it does mean that I have to stop and really think about it carefully.

As I mention in the beginning of my Reilly's Luck Notes, these aren't plans, though they may become plans someday, they are thoughts. It's what taking all the details seriously made me think. That said, casually reading the book about 20 times, prior to getting serious and taking these notes, didn't lead me to having those realizations. Reading for fun you just get what you want to get out of it and then you move on. What's in that breakdown is the first step of a professional disassembly. It's done to study what the raw material really is, says, whatever.

If Louise does stick with Pavel and comes to the US with him it really says something about her, she's really stuck in a role. That's okay if that's what an adaptation of a story needs to say. In a story where you are examining the roles available for women at the time it gives you an interesting range:

Louise will "sell herself" for the family (hopefully just once) even though it's a lousy family, she's traditional in an ancient European tradition and men probably including her father exist at a distance.

Myra will "sell herself" often, for herself, to get ahead. Men are to be used, possibly an aggressive or self loathing response to an abusive father. She has more autonomy, but she's evil and damaged.

Boston has a positive father and brothers, she has grown up in a world of close relationships with good men, but men who value (because their wife and mother is dead) a woman for being a woman. She sits at the healthy end of the spectrum, a balance of male and female energy. She never has to "sell herself" it probably has never occurred to her as an option.

As the child of a prostitute who abandons him to death, Val (Valentine!) needs someone like her to complete his story in a positive way.

Val also has 3 "fathers." There's Durrant, who leaves him a legacy that becomes valuable (copper in my interpretation) that is the key to a future full of electricity and telecommunications. We never know him but his gift is sort of objective and scientific. There is Van, who is emotional and caring, but weak, dominated by Myra. And there is Will, perhaps too much of a man's man, the teacher, but Val opens him up to the world.

You don't always get this much when you dig, but it this case it's kind of amazing!

You should take a look at the Lost Treasures edition. It dives into the original unfinished short story in which Will is a cold hearted cheat and Val the crippled boy he manipulates for profit. In a COMPLETELY different way it is also a fascinating character study.