Who is Lily?

Lily is the novel's first-person narrator, and is introduced as a shy eight-year-old, infatuated with her new buddy Eva and her exciting, artistic parents. Lily comes from humble means; her parents are described as boring and bourgeois, conventional folks who struggle to survive the Depression. While Lily attributes many of her temperaments to her parents, she alternatively has the ambition to lead an exciting life, like the Trenthams. She wants to be different than her parents and longs to emulate the behavior of characters like Eva, Maria and Helena. As Lily ages, however, she becomes increasingly comfortable in her role as a self-described voyeur. She takes up writing, “learning the habit of attention, of noticing the world in all its ravishing detail and complexity,” and is more insecure and introspective than other characters (105).