Unnamed narrator

The novel is narrated by an unnamed 26-year-old woman living in New York City and experiencing a profound period of depression as the result of years of unprocessed grief and emotional turmoil. The narrator grew up in Poughkeepsie in upstate New York, the only child of two extremely distant and essentially negligent people. She recalls her mother moving through life in a fog of alcohol and pills, while her father was consumed with work and paid little attention to the narrator or her mother. The narrator moved to the New York to attend college at Columbia University where she studied art, and both of her parents died before she finished her degree - her father from cancer, her mother from suicide.

After her parents' deaths, the narrator increasingly withdrew from life. Her only romantic relationship was with Trevor, a man that manipulated and mistreated her. She lost...