Loneliness

The author sets the novel during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and within the insular confines of Senderovsky's House on the Hill property in order to explore the complex nature of innate human loneliness. In Act 1, Chapter 1, Senderovsky is excited to have his closest friends stay with him and his family. The narrator says that the friends will "finally unite, brought together by the kernels of a growing tragedy to be sure, but brought together nonetheless, in his favorite place on earth" (5). In this moment, the narrator captures the dichotomous nature of the characters' coming circumstances. Though the pandemic is bringing them together, the era is also defined by isolation. Indeed, over the course of their four-month stay on Senderovsky's property, although the group establishes a sense of community, each of the characters struggles with her own personal loneliness.

The author uses the colonists' complicated interpersonal dynamics to...