Fear and Avoidance

Throughout the novel, the main character and first person narrator’s vocational fear of the unknown inspires her profoundly avoidant and evasive behaviors. Because the narrator rarely discusses her life prior to the narrative present, the reader must rely upon context clues in order to understand the narrator’s reasons for withholding information about herself. At the start of the novel, the narrator endeavors to explain her frustrations with her surveillance job. This moment from “The Surveillance Job” inspires a rare moment of expositional flashback. “I’d quit my previous job,” the narrator explains, “after I developed burnout syndrome, and had gone back to living with my parents in order to recuperate . . . I’d left my last job because it sucked up every scrap of energy I had until there was not a shred left, but at the same time, I sensed that hanging...