Summary
The novel begins with Ani and her fiancé, Luke Harrison, shopping for items to add to their wedding registry. It is a hot summer day in New York City. While on the surface they look like a blissful couple, Ani indulges in a dark and violent fantasy about stabbing Luke. After they finish shopping, Ani and Luke go to eat lunch, and discuss plans for their upcoming wedding (the wedding is going to take place in October). Ani is 28 years old, and has been living in New York for six years; she is very conscious of the nuances of social class, and wants to appear wealthy and elegant. Ani is also very aware that Luke is a desirable man, since he is wealthy and handsome. She is vigilant about monitoring her behavior so that he finds her desirable, even though it sometimes means hiding aspects of her true self.
The next day, Ani goes to her job; she is a writer at The Women's Magazine, a well-known publication. Ani mostly writes articles about sex, and dreams of a more substantial career. Fortunately, she gets along well with her editor-in-chief, LoLo, and LoLo has hinted that she wants to promote Ani in the near future. However, Luke's company (he works in finance) has been mentioning the possibility of offering him a new position in London. Ani has been frustrated since, in their conversations, Luke has assumed she would prioritize his career and move away with him.
During her workday, Ani meets with a recent college graduate who attended the same private school that she did: the Bradley School. The younger woman, Spencer, alludes to a mysterious event from Ani's past, and references Ani's choice to use a shortened version of her full name: TifAni FaNelli. Ani began using her current name while she was at college, both because she wanted to avoid being recognized, and because she thought Ani was more elegant. She is looking forward to taking Luke's last name as soon as they marry.
The narrative flashes back to the past, when Ani was growing up as a teenager in Philadelphia. Her family was lower middle-class, but her mother was socially ambitious, and coveted the chance for Ani to advance her social position. After Ani was kicked out of Catholic school for getting caught smoking marijuana, her mother decided to enroll her in the Bradley School, a prestigious private school in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Since Ani was a strong student, she was able to get financial aid, and she started at the school as a high school freshman in September 2001.
On her first day, Ani was eager to impress the other students. She also immediately took a liking to her new English teacher, Mr. Larson. A boy named Arthur was immediately friendly towards Ani, but she was focused on some of the other students that she quickly understood to be more popular. In particular, Ani aspired to be friends with two girls named Hilary and Olivia, and also quickly developed a crush on a boy named Liam, who was also a new student.
Back in the present day, Ani fixates on her appearance, particularly her weight. She is especially concerned about her appearance because of the upcoming wedding and a documentary that she is going to participate in. She reflects on how, during her college years, she consciously constructed her identity and appearance, modeling herself on her popular and beautiful best friend, Nell. These efforts paid off when Ani was able to attract Luke's attention, and they began dating shortly after they graduated. Ani goes to look at bridesmaid dresses, accompanied by her close friends (including Nell). Nell and Ani have been friends since college, and Nell knows Ani very well. The two of them both use prescription drugs to maintain very thin bodies.
While shopping for dresses, Ani learns that the filming dates for the documentary have been moved up; the documentary will now film in September. She is anxious about whether she can lose the weight she wants before the filming dates. The documentary is going to cover the story of some sort of incident that occurred at the Bradley School. Ani was somewhat hesitant to participate, but feared that it would look bad if she did not.
Analysis
The opening chapters of the novel begin to develop mystery and suspense by giving hints about Ani's past without disclosing the full truth of what happened. Ani's past is concealed from the reader in part because she works to separate it from the present-day reality of her life in New York City. The presence of the retrospective narrative provides more information about what happened to Ani as a young teenager, but because it unfolds gradually, interspersed with the present-day events occurring years later, readers only partially gain information and insight. The alternating past and present storylines also provide a structural reflection of the novel's thematic preoccupation with the past. As much as she tries (and as much as other characters might pressure her), Ani can never negate her past experiences. The conflict she experiences throughout the novel largely stems from her unsuccessfully trying to act as though her past has never occurred, and her character develops as she accepts that her past is a formative influence on her identity. Ani's disjointed and unsettled relationship to her past is made apparent through the symbolism of her name change; she has distanced herself from her teenage identity by trying to give herself a new identity. Ani also sees her forthcoming marriage to Luke as a significant additional step in distancing herself from her past self; she will take Luke's last name upon their marriage. Ani, however, falsely believes that a new name can turn her into a new person and does not yet realize how much she resents the pressure to completely abandon her past self.
Ani's attempt to completely dismiss her origins and her past reflect the theme of appearance versus reality, which is a prominent theme in her life in general, and especially in her relationship. Ani sees Luke as her passport to enter a rarified world of the upper classes, and therefore is determined to maintain that relationship at all costs. Ani is a very astute social observer, who makes acerbic comments throughout the novel; she can be cruel in her observations, but she is rarely incorrect. Ani can notice the fine details that convey someone's class and social position, and this is particularly pertinent given the setting of New York City. There is strong social stratification in the city, and it also famously attracts people who are hoping to reinvent themselves. Ani has become adept at detecting people who are pretending to be sophisticated and cosmopolitan, and she is determined to construct her outward appearance so that she is perceived that way. However, because Ani is so keenly aware of the nuances of social position, she is also hyper-aware of all of the ways in which she is not the same as people like Luke, who were born into wealth and privilege. Ani has set herself up for a never-ending cycle of feeling inadequate; she falsely believes that her marriage will provide her with a permanent sense of stability.
In addition to her striving to perform sophistication and social class, Ani is also hyper-aware of patriarchal expectations on women: that she appear effortlessly thin, beautiful, and straddling a razor thin-line between sexy and delicate. Ani knows that the expectations placed upon women to uphold unrealistic beauty standards are unfair, but she also sees them as a way to wield power. Although this only becomes apparent later in the novel, Ani has internalized the misogynistic beliefs about women and the way she was treated as an object due to the trauma she suffered as a young woman. She treats her body with disdain and disgust because that was how other people treated her. In particular, Ani's obsession with keeping her body as thin as possible reflects her desire to retroactively achieve control over her body after it was repeatedly violated without her consent.
Ani not only performs the social expectations placed on many women, but she ironically also participates in reinforcing these expectations through her job. Ani is a writer for a popular women's magazine, where she mainly writes articles about sex, despite having ambitions to write about more significant topics. (The author of the novel worked in magazine journalism, including Cosmopolitan magazine, for many years). Ani feels confined and restricted; even the name of the magazine, The Women's Magazine, implies that there are only specific topics that could be of interest or value to women. Ani resents that the writing she produces seems to assume that women are vapid, and primarily focused on pleasing men (all of the sex tips Ani writes about seem to presume heterosexuality). However, she also performs the role of reinforcing these expectations and norms because she believes it will individually benefit her to do so. Ani is trapped in a double-bind, where she feels empowered to pursue some of her goals and ambitions, but she believes she needs to exploit or compete with other women in order to do so.
Ani's absence of close relationships is reflected in both her engagement and her friendships. Nell is the one person Ani actually seems to trust and feel close to, which foreshadows the important role Nell will play throughout the plot. With the other women that Ani is supposedly close friends with, she is actually competitive and toxic. Ani collects the people that she believes a woman like her should have in her social circle, but does not seem to recognize the paradox that she does not like these people. On an even darker level, Ani seems largely disdainful of Luke; while she is fixated on her goal of becoming Luke's wife, she does not seem to actually like him as an individual person or partner. There are also early hints that Ani is seeking types of sexual gratification that she must conceal from Luke, and that she feels shame and self-loathing about her own deepest desires.
