Narrator

The unnamed first person narrator is the main character of the novel. In the narrative present, the narrator is pregnant with her second child. Although she has carried, given birth to, and raised a child already, her second pregnancy begets the “same anxieties” she experienced during her first pregnancy (190). Chief among these anxieties are the narrator’s fears that she “will fail to be an adequate mother,” that she “will neither recognize nor love [her] child,” that she has “failed already, somehow,” and that “failure has been written into [her] genetics or [her] history” and will thus “be passed on” to her fragile newborn child (190). Because the narrator is wrestling with these concerns throughout the entirety of the novel, she often relies upon history and science, reading and study for comfort. In much the same way she delved into books when her mother was sick and after her...