Palm Springs

Palm Springs is a city in California, renowned for its hot mineral springs, and is the setting for much of the novel's narrative action. The fact that the community is a resort city - that is, a community essentially founded on the industry of leisure and/or healing - can be seen as reinforcing certain elements of the central characters' life situations. For further consideration of this idea, see "Style - Setting" and "Topics for Discussion - In what ways do you think ..."

The Bungalow Complex

The central characters - Andy, Dag and Claire - live in a grouping of small bungalows circled around a communal swimming pool. This sense of community within a community (the community of houses within the city of Palm Springs) reinforces the idea, developed throughout the novel, that the three friends are themselves a community within a community. That is to...