Male Violence

The menace of the potential for violence in men is at the heart of the novel, as the sisters (seemingly) live in a dystopian future world where men have become increasingly violent towards women, to the extent that isolation is viewed as women's only avenue of survival. According to King and their mother, the girls would die simply from breathing the air on the mainland if they left the island, and close contact with men would infect them with some kind of deadly disease. (This “disease” is perhaps a metaphor for female desire, as close contact with Llew does nearly destroy Lia.)

The clinic run by King and the girls' mother is meant to combat the effects of men on damaged women from the mainland, and the passages from the women's diaries or the Welcome Book (the provenance of the passages is unclear) in between...