Marian McAlpin

Marian McAlpin is the main character and principal protagonist of the story. She is a college graduate in her mid-twenties who has settled at a low-paying, boring job working for a survey company. She has a stable, predictable boyfriend named Peter who is an up-and-coming lawyer and the two become engaged shortly after Peter’s last college guy pal gets married. As Peter begins to treat Marian more like his wife and less like an independent woman, Marian develops an aversion to certain foods. Soon she cannot eat meat, eggs, rice pudding and certain vegetables. She becomes increasingly disconnected from her own self and begins to act erratically, spending time with an emaciated graduate student named Duncan who has co-dependent tendencies.

Marian soon discovers that she is just as dependent on Duncan as he is on her and she flees a party at Peter’s house meant...