Distinguishing Fantasy from Reality

Bennett blurs between the narrator’s fictional daydreams and her concrete becomes nearly indistinguishable, proving that a person’s memories can be just as tangible and affecting even if they only occur in one’s head. The narrator shares much of her life in past tense chapters that read as though they are flashbacks. The first hint that the narrator’s point of view is unreliable is in “Morning, 1908” where the supposedly same narrator is all of a sudden lurched onto the side of the road in 1908. This entire chapter reads like a rape fantasy, but is really more about the narrator’s fantasy for her to desire having sex with a man. The chronology of this chapter is suspicious and is where Bennett begins to unravel the narrator’s memories as being both vivid dreams and real memories of past events. Perhaps...