Essay Questions

What is the significance of the architecture of the home the narrator lives in after moving from New York to Sausalito?

One of the very pieces of concrete information—no pun intended—the narrator offers about herself is that she lives on a houseboat. Or, as the four-hundred strong community of owners in Sausalito calls them, a floating home. Hannah will explicitly refer to the unique qualities of such living several times throughout the narrative and the uncertain nature balance and security of such living conditions quickly establishes the houseboat as a major theme in the story. Such a perfectly modulates symbolic status would be more than enough to qualify the writer’s decision to situate her characters within this setting as a brilliant inspiration, but eventually the significance of a home which floats on the water is expanded to become integrally related to the more mundane mechanics of plotting. Thus, the floating home carries both symbolic and narrative significance simultaneously.

What is the last thing Jules said to the narrator before she leaves in the wee hours of the morning on that first night without Owen?

Jules is actually a she, not a he, so this last thing said does not apply to the title. Jules is the narrator’s closest friend who comforts in the hours immediately following the disappearance of her husband and the revelation of the business where he works being raided by federal agents. Just before finally leaving Hannah by herself as requested and finally heading home shortly after two in the morning, the last thing Jules asks whether or not her friend had her own private checking account separate from her husband. Hannah’s answer is partly honest, but slightly deceptive, allowing that she does, but keeping to herself the potentially pertinent fact that it is only because Owen insisted. Jules advises that this is a good thing since the first thing the feds will do is freeze all assets in his name. The last thing Jules says is an adage most commonly associated with the film All the President’s Men but which has since been routinely applied as common sense advise to nearly all criminal investigations involving corruption: “That’s the first thing they’ll do while they’re trying to figure out where he went. What he knew. They always follow the money.”

How does the opening scene of the first chapter (following the Prologue) foreshadow the entire narrative?

After a brief flashback episode in the Prologue, the actual narrative commences with literally a knock at the door that will changed everything. Hannah, the narrator, even offers a bit of self-conscious commentary on this is a standard trope of dramatic conflict presented for entertainment. The person on the other side of the door in those situations is usually a police officer though with the Prologue having established the conditions of domesticity, the expectation could just as easily be that it is a romantic rival without or a gun gripped in her hand. The point being that opening the door under the rules of this trope mandates that the person knocking is a figure of some level of menace. Instead, it turns out to be a completely non-menacing female middle-school student dressed for a soccer game. The little girl—a complete stranger to the narrator—addresses her as “Mrs. Michaels” since she has been charged with delivering from her husband, Owen Michaels. Immediately, the narrator informs the reader, but not the girl, that she made the decision to keep going by her maiden name since she did not get married until she was nearly forty. The mystery that is established almost immediately—Owen’s unexplained self-willed disappearance—eventually reveal that the entire story turns on the unexpected and the misassumption of identity that is outlined in these first few paragraphs.