Claire Emily Thomas

To borrow from Clive’s astute assessment of Claire, she is one “fucked-up girl” (287). As her first name indicates, Claire Thomas claims she needs clear sight; as her last name suggests, however, she must come to be content with doubts. Claire is restless to understand, as her curious penchant for scribbling letters into the air suggests. In that habit, she writes herself tidy and clean signals in what is otherwise blank and unsettling emptiness. Her obsession with the death of her older sister sustains her for years, organizes her life, to the point where she understands, once Clive tells her story of her sister’s actual accidental death, she never really wanted closure at all. She needed the mystery. It is possible the entire novel, all the fragmented perspectives, are Claire’s imaginative projections into the hearts and minds of others, a revelation not only of...