Mary Laura Philpott

Mary Laura Philpott is the author of I Miss You When I Blink and the narrator of each of the stories. She is a woman living through what she describes as the "universal adult experience: the identity crisis" (4). Throughout each of the captures in the book, she explores different parts of herself and how she learns to cope with the world around her. She is a perfectionist -- Type A, as she describes herself -- and is "addicted to getting things right" (18). This need for constant perfection and affirmation leads her to confront serious questions about herself. Namely, Mary struggles with what she describes as "all the selves I simultaneously have been, am and will be" (60). This inability to confront these different aspects of her nature leads her to become depressed with her own perfect life, searching for ways to become happy again.

In order to...