Amanda Wordlaw

Amanda Wordlaw is one of the novel's first person narrators and main characters. In the narrative present, Amanda is "living on the white-washed island of Ibiza" with her friends Catherine and Ernest Shuger (3). After leaving her husband Lantis and her daughter Panda some time prior to the narrative present, Amanda has been traveling from country to country. Having recently "stopped writing erotic fiction and started writing travel books," Amanda's newly peripatetic lifestyle is inspired by and compliments her recent vocational shift (11). Coming to Ibiza has also been Amanda's way of escaping other relational and emotional complexities she was facing while in Brazil. When she received Catherine's card requesting that she join her and Ernest in Spain, Amanda immediately obliged.

Amanda's inability to stay in one place or in one relationship conveys her characters' internal unrest. Indeed, even after liberating herself from the constraints of marriage and motherhood...