Narrator

The narrator is the main character of the novel. She remains unnamed throughout, and her first-person point of view narration dictates the entirety of the narrative action, tension, and conflict. At the start of the novel, the narrator is 45 years old. She is living in Los Angeles with her husband Harris and her child Sam. Although she has a nominally stable home life, this domestic sphere feels suffocating to the narrator. She spends the majority of her time at home locked in her garage studio and working on her art. She is primarily a writer, and values this creative time alone, because it allows her to escape into her imaginary worlds and to realize her fantasies in fiction. Whenever the narrator emerges from the garage, however, she assumes a more formal maternal and wifely identity. She and Harris share “a mutual and steadfast devotion,” but their relationship is...