Loneliness

Through the isolated dynamics of her first person narrator Vesta's life, the author explores the entrapping and all-consuming effects of loneliness on the individual's psyche. After her husband Walter's death, Vesta flees her home in Monolith with her dog Charlie, and settles in Levant. In her new hometown, Vesta knows no one. She buys an abandoned Girl Scouts cabin in the middle of the woods, where she has little to no contact with anyone in her community.

Adopting Charlie grants Vesta a sense of empowering companionship. In Chapter 1 she says: "I hadn't realized how lonely I'd been, and then," after getting Charlie, "suddenly I wasn't alone at all" (11). However, as Vesta's narrative unfolds, the reader realizes her world and sense of reality are almost entirely defined by her chronic loneliness. Her unprecedented obsession with solving the mystery of Magda's alleged murder, illustrates how deeply she desires...