"Amanda had a feeling like being watched, but there was no one out there watching her, was there? An involuntary shiver at the very idea, then a retreat into the adult illusion of safety."
Amanda and her husband Clay have gone on vacation with their kids Rose and Archie to spend a week at a rental house on Long Island. The house is located in an isolated spot incapable of making or receiving calls from a cell phone, although Wi-Fi is available. The point is that it is far enough away from the all the conveniences of modern life to feel as though it is isolated from civilization. Even though it really is not in any authentic sense, there is a sort of primeval mood. It is Amanda alone, at first, who is instantly unnerved by a presence she seems to sense but does not actually see. Once Rose and her brother venture far out into the woods, however, Amanda’s 13-year-old daughter also begins to feel a sense of being watched, but this is a feeling lacking the paranoia of her mother. In fact, Rose likes sometimes pretending that she is being watched, perhaps by a camera somewhere. The pervasive feeling of being under scrutiny serves to create a tone of edgy discomfort which both precedes and fosters the imminent arrival of the apocalypse.
“I know it’s a surprise. But maybe you can . . . This is our house. We wanted to be in our house. Safe. While we figured out what’s going on out there.”
The foursome is unexpectedly interrupted in their vacation sojourn by the arrival of the couple who actually own the house. They had been in New York when there was a city-wide blackout. Amanda is suspicious of the story and the couple, but her husband is more accommodating. Upon their arrival, the conversation is awkward and coded as it becomes clear Amanda and Clay are at odds and that G.H. and his wife Ruth are going to exercise their rights of ownership no matter what. The strangeness of the situation—a homeowner feeling like intruders and vacation renters trying to assert a proper claim of temporarily possessorship—contributes to the already established mood paranoia and mystery. And then, of course, there is the major blackout along the East Coast which is never a good sign. The two issues raised here—the sense of protection offered by being at home and the fear of what is going on “out there”—intensifies throughout the narrative on the way to becoming major themes.
"Amanda could see that George Washington could see these birds too, but there was documented evidence that delusion could be shared. She got out of the tub, rubbery with the absorbed heat. She stood naked as the day she appeared on this planet. She watched three flamingos cavorting happily in the swimming pool, their compatriots on the grass beyond."
As it turns out, the last name of the man who owns the house is Washington and the “G.” in his initials stands for George. As it also turns out, Amanda is surprisingly comfortable with her body in front of this stranger. With a loud splash, they land in the pool as if suddenly dropped from the heavens by God. Even weirder is that these are not just common everyday flamingoes, but clearly some representative of the best of their species. Alpha flamingoes all, just suddenly falling from the sky into a pool. Something apocalyptic is happening in the county, but it is taking place far enough from this house on Long Island to remain a complete mystery. This novel is a story about an apocalypse, but in the abstract. The major players are not characters and the characters through whom it is viewed are too isolated to know for sure what is happening. For the overwhelmingly majority of the population, it will be a complete mystery that makes no sense and that we are going to be forced to accept no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in when it commences.
