Lucy

The novel’s heroine is a 38-year-old graduate student named Lucy, who endlessly procrastinates on completing her doctoral dissertation in the dual classics and literature program at Southwest State in Arizona and works at the university library. Lucy is determined to maintain her full-time status and funding for as long as possible, so she does not have to find a “real” job (4). Nine years have gone by, and she still has made no progress on her thesis, which examines the intentionality of the blank spaces in Sappho’s poetry, a premise she no longer believes in. The topic of her thesis matches her own preoccupation with blankness and nothingness.

Lucy is described as having auburn hair, a slim figure, small breasts, and wide hips. She is hyper-critical and observant, brutally honest about the deficiencies of others and of herself and is prone to falling into existential vortexes of...