The house in Poughkeepsie

The narrator's childhood home in Poughkeepsie is a symbol of all of her complicated feelings about her parents, most notably her belief that they did not love her. The fact that she feels unable to commit to selling the house over the course of the novel is demonstrative of her inability to let go of her pain and move forward. "I wanted to hold onto the house the way you'd hold on to a love letter," she explains, "It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world" (64). She believes the house also serves as a reminder that it is better to be alone than "stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn't" (64). At the end of the novel, after her emotional epiphany, she is finally able to give her financial adviser permission to sell the...