Tragic Accidents

The main plot points throughout the novel are all a series of tragic accidents, followed by an examination of how the different characters have their lives affected by the accidents. The first accident, in narrative order, is the sudden death of Anita’s father, Philip, as a pedestrian in a car accident. Anita’s way of moving through her grief with regards to this accident is to thoroughly examine each possible detail of the accident, as if she were a police detective. Throughout Anita’s unofficial investigation, she is struck by the startling contrast of her father’s vivacious life, compared to his suddenly lifeless corpse: “She wanted to know how a man who wakes at 5:00 every morning and has followed the same rituals for decades (hot lemon juice, thirty minutes of yoga, fifteen minutes of exercises, a cold shower, breakfast on the veranda with...