Dorothy

As a former poet laureate, living in a luxurious apartment with her daughter Annabel and her partner Louis (a successful businessman), Dorothy Moy’s situation seems to be enviable. However, her relationship and her self-esteem are in tatters, and her teaching career at a standstill, since she lost her last job following a mental health crisis. A troubled teen, and a trust fund beneficiary following the suicide of her mother, Dorothy has never associated money with happiness, and would “dump it all into the sea to have her mother back, if only for a day” (20). She often feels as though she were at the bottom of the sea herself, with an “anemone”-like chandelier hanging over her head, and the storm-torn city outside constantly strewn with “rotting fish” (22, 152).

Dorothy’s efforts to rise to the surface involve (paradoxically) diving deeper and deeper into the past, through therapy sessions...