Summary

Chapter 1 is set in June of 2000, when the 26-year-old unnamed narrator began a dangerous routine of abusing prescription sleeping pills. She explains her daily routine: she woke up, got two large cups of coffee from the bodega around the corner from her Upper East Side apartment, came back home, took several different kinds of sleeping pills, and watched movies on her couch until she fell asleep again. She ceased washing her clothes and showering, and lived off of the inheritance left to her by her dead parents. Her near-constant sleep was interrupted by visits from her college friend Reva, an executive assistant for an insurance firm, who complained unceasingly about her married boss, with whom she was having an affair. Reva was vain and materialistic (and also bulimic and obsessed with her weight), but she expressed her concern for the narrator's health during these...