Memory

Over the course of the novel, Lucy’s prolonged time in lockdown inspires her reflections on the past. Indeed, the author is using the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in order to challenge her main character’s internal growth. This temporal setting indeed instigates Lucy’s isolation from others, and in turn, her alienation from any defined present or future life. At the start of the novel, she is compelled to leave her life and home in New York City and move to Maine with her ex-husband William. Over the course of the chapters that follow, these alterations in Lucy’s environment and circumstances increasingly remind her of her childhood past. The author is therefore suggesting that when the individual’s present life becomes unstable, her mind retreats into the scenes and sensations of her past life. Indeed, Lucy’s memories of her former life become increasingly...