The title of this chapter refers to the Catalan artist Joan Miró. Miró was a painter sculptor and ceramist born in Barcelona, and he was popular by his style of surrealism. The phrase “miró miró on the wall who’s the fairest one of them all?” alludes to snow white where the evil queen asks the mirror on the wall who the fairest one is. The queen expects the answer of this question to be herself as she is extremely self-conceited. This is used as by the author to make a comparison to the new character introduced in this chapter, Claire.Claire is a rich women living with her husband on the upper east side of Manhattan. Claire lost her son in the Vietnam war and she joins a group of other women who have also lost their sons in the war, in order to help one another out. These women gather at each persons house and hear the story of the house owners child. Claire was the last one to host the group, and as she is the host she is very nervous about her appearance. She constantly thinks about how the other women are going to think about her and her house. She is incredibly insecure and believes that her friends will start to dislike her. This relates back to the queen how she cared so much about her appearance and she looked at the mirrors and asked the mirror to reassure herself. In this case Claire being rich has paintings around her house and so she is looking at them and trying to change the way her house looks because she wants to impress the women. It is not until the end of the chapter that Claire realizes these women are not here to impress each other but they are here to grieve and help one another overcome the loss of their sons.
