Italy, 2000

The novel begins in Italy in the year 2000. It opens with the narrator looking out at the sea, in her early twenties, "daffy with sensation" and thrilled with the possibilities of life (1). Finding distance between the naivete of her undergraduate years and setting the stage for her graduate studies and life beyond school, this opening scene in a foreign country seems almost to take place out of time itself. Italy therefore represents for the narrator the potential of life, the promise of womanhood to come.

Ann Arbor, 2002

The narrator chooses to study Jacobean revenge tragedies in graduate school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here, her womanhood is just beginning. She visits a friend's apartment and hears the story of a young girl who has been raped; wandering back to her apartment, she admits, if only to herself, that rape is what she wants. Ashamed but cognizant of her desires...