New York City

New York City is the novel's overarching setting. Lola and Boots live here in a small Manhattan apartment together. Lola's life in New York is largely defined by her relationship with Boots, her work at Radio New York, and her wanderings around Chinatown either with friends or alone. Her relationship with the city begins to change, however, after she learns about the Golconda and Clive's experiments. In Chapter 5, she says that "Everywhere were memories encased in glass and concrete. Clive . . . had changed my vision to romance, turning everything else into black and white. And now this color, an alchemy of memory and nostalgia was all I could see" (121). As she navigates the streets of New York throughout the scenes and chapters following, every place and person she comes into contact with becomes associated with memories of the past. She cannot see a single gallery, storefront, or...