Narrator's Home

In the narrative present, the narrator lives with her husband and her daughter. Many of the scenes that take place in the present are set in this location. Because the narrator is pregnant with her second child, she is often lying in the house with her feet up, resting. These periods by herself often compel the narrator into bouts of remembrance or reflection. Indeed, the narrator rarely depicts the appearance or mood of her home. Rather, the house is simply a backdrop for many of the narrator's most complex and meandering internal experiences.

Mother's House

When the narrator is a child, she lives with her mother. After she begins university, the narrator moves out of her mother's house. However, she is called back to the house when her mother falls ill "shortly after [her] twenty-first birthday" (8). Although the narrator maintains "the shared flat behind the Elephant and...