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 I'll go with knotty problem.  This entire novel vexed me incredibly~ it took a full two hours of Jane Austen therapy to stop me just being annoyed. I don't dislike the book entirely~ if Deanna and Eddie had died.... or had just not been written about I would have liked the book much better.  That entire section of the novel was ridiculous.  When they weren't frolicking about the bed sheets (or tree trunks) they were wandering the wilderness.... the author has obviously never gone mountaineering before.... *disdaining huff* but whatever.  I'm amazed how up in arms I became over this...  Anyway, I will dwell on Garnett and Nannie Rawley, I think, because their back-and-forth is a conversation that goes on constantly in my hometown Williamsburg, VA (except that, in most cases, the argument is whether science should 'exist' at all, rather than who has claim to the title).  The self-importance of Garnett... and of Nannie, for that matter, is really interesting to me.  I don't think their conversation was ever as intellectual as it could have been, and I'd like to take their talking points and attempt to go one deeper.  More than the implications of being part of a food chain~ what motivation does a human have to distance him/herself, transcend the food chain, or remain firmly in it?  Why kill out of suspicion?  What qualities/reactions tend towards happiness, as far as embracing ecological situations?  Why strive or try to define happiness when the most basic of natural principles, prey and predation, is a conscious reality? fra la... fra la... and schma....