Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 119of such a personal and intimate nature—what he labels “positively
indecent” (p. 5). This sense of uncanny repulsion that John feels
when confronted with the physicality of his mother emerges in the
novel’s other important moments. On a flight back from the United
States, the narrator describes Costello “slumped deep in her seat”
and “snoring faintly” (p. 33). John, we are told, “can see up her nos-
trils, into her mouth, down the back of her throat. And what he can-
not see he can imagine: the gullet, pink and ugly, contracting as it
swallows” (p. 34). The real source of this revulsion is revealed in the
final sentence of the chapter: “No, he tells himself, that is not where
I come from, that is not it” (p. 34). Such a strenuous denial suggests
that the character is repelled by the implication that he is physically
composed of the same matter as his mother—a notion that places
the two in unsettling proximity. What appears to add to this sense
of disgust is the all-too-visible fact that the latter’s body is deteriorat-
ing: it is approaching the end of its mortality, as will his own.
This conflicted regard John has for his mother therefore adds
additional depth and texture to the narrative. As we follow Costello’s
journey as an animal rights activist and ethical speaker, we gain an
intimate sense of the character as a physical and emotional being,
with all the material contingencies and fragilities this involves. In
one particularly memorable scene, Costello breaks down in tears
while John is driving her to the airport, racked by the fact that
her most fundamental ethical values are not shared by those with
whom she is closest. John momentarily balks in his response but
finally “takes his mother in his arms” without addressing her words
directly (p. 115). Significantly, the narrator then provides us with the
short and somewhat out-of-place observation that John “inhales the
smell of cold cream, of old flesh” (p. 115). Although this is clearly
an emotionally delicate and solemn moment for John, it is none-
theless attended with a familiar sense of physical revulsion towards
his mother’s body. This moment engenders a number of important
effects. First, it makes the reader feel more emotionally implicated
in the scene by virtue of the fact that John, the son with the aging
mother, is the focalizer. Given that we are provided privileged access
to his thoughts and feelings, we observe the moment through John’s
eyes and subsequently come to share the character’s slightly damaged