Gordon's novel raises difficult questions that do not appear to be satisfactorily answered. As in most of her fiction, she deals with painful questions about guilt, evil, and the responsibility of human beings to care for each other, and especially for those who are most unlovable. She compounds the difficulty of her questions by seeming to reject the answers of traditional religion, yet creating some of her most sympathetic characters, like the alcoholic Father Mulcahy, as intrinsically good. Her use of irony presses readers to face unpalatable truths about human weaknesses and failures.

1. Isabel's relationship to her father is complex. He believes he is acting out of love, but is his love for his daughter destructive or life-giving?

2. Isabel's relationship with Margaret Casey raises the question of charity. Do what extent to we owe it to unlovable people to alter our own lives to assist them...