Friendship

Over the course of the novel, the author traces the complexities of Alice and Eileen's relationship, in order to explore the importance of friendship to personal survival. Though the women do not live near each other in the narrative present, they sustain their connection via an ongoing email exchange which dominates the narrative space, and dictates its overarching form. In these emails, presented in every other chapter, the college friends discuss everything from personal anecdotes, vocational frustrations, romantic entanglements, to the collapse of civilization. The breadth of their discussions illustrates how closely the women rely on one another, even when apart. In Chapter 2, Alice writes to Eileen saying, "You should know that our correspondence is my way of holding on to life, taking notes on it, and thereby preserving something of my—otherwise almost worthless, or even entirely worthless—existence on this rapidly degenerating planet" (16). Alice's...