Dorothy (Dottie) Chambers

Dottie (as she’s referred to throughout much of the narrative) is the book’s title character. While she doesn’t appear throughout the entire narrative (being entirely absent from Book 2), and while she is somewhat peripheral to the action in some of the books in which she does appear (Books 1 and 4), the novel gives the very clear impression that the experiences of the other characters, even in the decades-distant past like Book 2, are about her, related to her, or contributed to defining her. She is, in short, the character the book is about.

What’s particularly interesting about her, and challenging about reading the novel, is that she appears in several identities: photojournalist Jackie Scott (photo journalist and obsessive interest of human rights lawyer Tom Harrington), Renee Gardner (the big-breasted, cocaine-addicted wife of criminal Jack Parmentier), and Carla Costa (a prostitute, whom Dottie “becomes” in...