Most of Phillips's major characters in the stories in Fast Lanes are psychologically scarred by the deterioration of their families and their subsequent uncertainties about their own identities. Their emotional stability varies from the madness of Rayme and the manic egocentricity of Mickey to the resignation of Thurman and the placid acceptance of Bess.

Rejected when her father chooses the children who will remain with him and abandoned when her mother starves herself to death, Rayme responds by deliberately choosing behavior which will further set her apart. She gloats in the link to her mother which her madness supplies, and she refuses to acknowledge conventional concepts such as ownership or the distinction between edible and inedible substances.

Kato Black, who was abandoned by her mother in "Blue Moon," depends for her sense of identity upon her role as Billy Hampson's girlfriend, and when Billy's mother pressures him to...