At the time, what rankled was the idea that we were supposed to see these boys as the stars, to fall at their sweaty feet. What bothers me now is those boys internalizing girls as audience, there only to act as mirrors, to make their accomplishments realer.
-- Bodie Kane (Part I, Chapter 10)

Importance: Here, Bodie remembers the way in which young men at the Granby School expected their female classmates to act as submissive “audience” (56) members. This attention to systemic and learned sexism connects to Makkai’s wider thematic concern with the normalized mistreatment and abuse of women.

Actually it was the one where the therapist spent years grooming her. It was the one where the senator, then a promising teenager, shoved his dick in the girl’s face. She was also a promising teenager. It was the one where the billionaire pushed the woman into a phone booth, but no one believed her.
-- Bodie Kane (Part I, Chapter 11)

Importance: At several...