Summary

The novel is narrated in the third person, past tense. Chapter 1 provides a cursory portrait of Corey’s adolescence. Gloria Goltz birthed Corey her senior year of college and then dropped out. She aspired to become a writer but did not achieve this. Corey’s father, Leonard Agoglia, is introduced, described as a self-proclaimed physics genius who works as a security guard at MIT. The reader learns how “the man who was supposed to be Corey’s father acted more like an uncle or a family friend” (9). Corey and Gloria lived an itinerant life until 2007, when they moved into Quincy. Nevertheless, Leonard “was always away, always disappearing, always occupied, always involved in something, but [Gloria] had a feeling it was nothing after all” (11). The reader also gets a glimpse of Corey’s...