“We didn’t call the police right away. Later, I would blame myself, wonder if things might have turned out differently if I hadn’t shrugged it off, insisting Dad wasn’t missing missing but just delayed, probably still in the woods looking for Eugene, thinking he’d run off somewhere. Mom says it wasn’t my fault, that I was merely being optimistic, but I know better. I don’t believe in optimism. I believe there’s a fine line (if any) between optimism and willful idiocy, so I try to avoid optimism altogether, lest I fall over the line mistakenly.”
This is the opening paragraph of the novel and immediately situates much of the information that will be pertinent to the rest of the story. This passage does not identify the first-person narrator by name, but a rough outline of Mia’s personality is drawn in the broad strokes of her self-induced confession about her perspective toward being optimistic. Insight into her psyche is also offered through her expression of guilt toward her own questionable instinctive behavior. The opening paragraph identifies three major characters by name or their direct familial relationship to the narrator, indicating that this is a novel focused on family dynamics. The key point of this introduction is that it sets the foundation for what will become the motif of Mia’s recurring instances of self-doubt.
“Hi, this is the Covid Contact Tracing Team from the Virginia Department of Health trying to reach the legal guardian of Eugene Parkson. We have reason to believe that he is a close contact of someone who has Covid - 19, with an exposure date of Saturday, June twentieth, four days ago. Please call me back as soon as you can for testing and quarantine instructions.”
This quote is significant because it indicates that the story belongs to that ever-increasing list of works of fiction loosely categorized within the sub-genre of Covid/quarantine novels. The mention of the specific date, June 20, does not even need to be expanded outward to include the year because it fits within a narrow historical timeline. Just a few paragraphs after the opening passage, the narrator identifies that her father went missing in the year 2020. The COVID outbreak and subsequent quarantine are not used simply as a deep background to the story. As this quote strongly suggests, the actual day-to-day reality of life during the pandemic plays a significant role. The effects of social distancing and communicative difficulties enhance the more central narrative element of Mia’s brother Eugene dealing with the communicative difficulties associated with his autistic disorder.
“Anyway, okay, so, dry, warm, in front of fire, reading. If you’d spent the whole day like that and I asked how happy you were, you might say six. Perfectly content. But let’s say you were cold and miserable outside in a storm and you just came in and sat in front of the fire, and right as you got warm and dry and started reading a great book, I asked how happy you were. You’d probably give a higher number. Because relative to what you’ve been experiencing, your baseline, your happiness level would be higher, see?”
Central to a thematic overview of the story is an invention of Mia’s father he terms the “happiness quotient.” The precise determination of what this term means is never directly defined and briefly becomes a subject of mystery for Mia following her father’s disappearance. This passage represents one of his attempts to outline the meaning for her in the kind of analytical language that she understands best. What he is explaining here is that the concept of happiness is relative to any external conditions in which the emotional state is felt. That explanation of what Mia’s father is saying is immediately understandable but later Mia will reflect back on this exposition of happiness being relative as actually being far more complex. She will realize that what her father is describing is technically just a “difference” but he specifically labels it as a “quotient.” This complexity of meaning also helps to explain, perhaps, why this book contains multiple explicatory footnotes despite being a novel rather than a work of non-fiction.
