Malibu Rising

Children and their parents are similar in many ways in the novel. They share physical characteristics and their experiences often echo.

Physically, the “Riva lips” are mentioned early in the novel, passing down from Mick to each of his children (12). The Riva lips are also how both Nina and Hud realize that Casey is their sister, even before their other siblings are able to figure it out. Nina also mentions how “Us Riva women have great boobs,” noting that Kit has them as well.

Structurally, Nina’s life runs parallel to June’s experiences. They both dream of leaving Malibu, but get stuck caring for children abandoned by their father and have to run the restaurant. They both marry men who leave them and beg to be taken back—and both have to confront their passivity in the face of male willfulness. Despite these similarities, however, Nina grows past her mother’s limitations. Conscious of the similarities between their lives, Nina worries that she is simply “tak[ing] her place, just as her mother and grandmother had before her, behind the register” (157). June’s eventual slide into depression and alcoholism is a cautionary tale for her daughter—Nina imagines June giving her a box of her experiences that Nina carries as a burden, until she realizes that “[h]er job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what of the past she wanted to leave behind” (357). The night of the party, Nina does just that: She gets rid of Brandon, stands up to her father, decides to sell the restaurant, and plans to finally travel to Portugal.

Another strand in the novel compares genetic inheritance to the kinds of bonds forged in chosen families. Because Hud never knew his birth mother, the only link he has to a genetic relative is Mick. Hud is terrified of becoming like his father, and worries that inheriting the rock star’s flaws is inescapable: “Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not” (130). By the end of the novel, however, having learned that he will soon be a parent, he chooses to be like his adoptive mother June, deciding that he will “love his child the way his mother had loved him: actively, every day, and without ambiguity” (349). Similarly, though Casey is mildly interested in whether Mick is her biological father, she knows that her parents are the ones who raised her with the knowledge that creating and committing to a family is a choice. Armed with this lesson, she goes in search of a new found family, and finds it in the Rivas—they will love her just as June chose to do when she initially took in Hud.

The ocean is a place of sanctuary for Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit. The waves become a livelihood in their adult lives, but before that, the beach offers escape. Nina goes surfing to relax and meditate: “[a]s she floated there, the wind chilling her wet skin, the sun crisping her bare shoulders, with her legs dangling in the water, Nina was already getting a small slice of the peace she’d come out here for” (27).

When June fears that Nina will follow in her footsteps, she sends her children to the beach so that they can escape—and they do so finding surfing, finding "a previously undiscovered part of themselves” (125).

After June dies, Nina restores a semblance of normality by getting her siblings to surf together. She also uses the water as a temporary escape from the responsibilities she has to her family. Being able to surf is critical for Nina, who is “consumed by it” (126). At the end of the novel, leaving to surf in Portugal is Nina’s way of finally living for herself.

The beach is also an important setting for emotional confrontations. Several of the novel’s crucial scenes happen on the beach: Mick marrying June, Hud learning that he will become a father, the siblings confronting Mick when he wants to come back into their lives, and the three remaining Rivas making room for Casey to be a member of their family. The ocean is a sanctuary that mediates the Rivas’ ability to face the real world.