Summary

The novel opens with a list of resolutions: many things the narrator, Eleanor Flood, will do to ensure that “Today will be different” (3). There are several reasons why she wants a change, but primarily she cites “regrettable micro-transactions” with others that leave the world a worse place (8). She is meant to have lunch with Sydney Madsen, a friend from her first days in Seattle who continues to cling to Eleanor.

The narrator and her husband Joe have lived in the city for ten years after living in New York. Joe, an ex-Catholic from Buffalo, had picked Seattle because he did not want to raise a child in Manhattan and learned that Seattle is the least religious city in the country. The couple is meant to move back to her choice of New York after ten years, though they have not discussed it yet...