Cleithrophobia
Much of the action in this slim volume takes place either aboard an airplane or inside the airport. Hadley suffers a bit of anxiety stemming from claustrophobia. Naturally, one can well imagine that being stuck inside the limited confines of a jet with even more limited options for escape would induce this anxiety, but Hadley takes it a step further. “Airports are torture chambers if you’re claustrophobic.” The narrator then goes on to penetrate her thoughts a little more deeply in which Hadley’s anxiety is specifically related not so much to the building itself, but to the masses of teeming people and the noise and sense of frenzy in their desperate desire to get to somewhere else as quickly as possible generates. Thus, it is less the actual airport that creates the sense of being tortured than the feeling of being trapped among that buzz of activity which actually comes closer to describing cleithrophobia than claustrophobia.
Fate
Actual bona fide claustrophobia begins to kick in for Hadley just minutes after the plane takes off. The first symptom is a bit of lightheadedness which she tries to counteract by focusing on the balding head of the man situated in front of her. “It’s like reading a map of the future, and she wonders if there are such telltale signs on everyone, hidden clues to the people they’ll one day become.” The simile comparing the composition of the thinning hairs on the man’s head to some kind of practice of foretelling the future is completely in keeping with the thematic focus of the story on the nature of fate and destiny. It also very quickly connects to the underlying tension of her father’s remarriage as she considers whether he has changed as a result of the alterations to the course his life had been set upon.
Limited Experience
The comparisons made through the use of similes tend to become more sophisticated and broad-ranging as the narrator ages. This is only logical since the power of the simile as a literary device is highly dependent upon familiarity and experience. When Hadley loses Oliver in the rush of passengers being herded toward customs, her melancholy runs deeper than her ability to metaphorically expressed it. When she thinks that “He’s like a song she can’t get out of her head. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop” it is a pitch-perfect reflection of her limited figurative vocabulary. For seventeen-year-olds, songs are the soundtrack of their short lives and as such take on greater emotional resonance than might be the case in another few decades. The parallel between the short-term memory of a boy she has known for less than half a day and a song that becomes an earworm is exceedingly apt.
Self-Awareness
Although not written from the first-person point of view, the narrative perspective of the book is clearly situated firmly within the mind of Hadley. The reader is treated to an insight into her thought processing as well as dialogue as a means of determining her character. This approach often explicitly paves the way such as when the third-person narrator offers the first-person self-examination. “She knows she has a tendency to shoot her mouth off—Dad always used to joke that she was born without a filter.” The two-part construction of this metaphorical self-description implicitly hints at more than it explicitly asserts. The violence of the image of shooting off her mouth combines with the mechanical connotation of the lack of a filter to imply through subtext that Hadley is more than merely mouthy. She has a sharp tongue that sometimes cuts herself as well as others.
A Dad and Daughter Story
The main plot of this novel is the burgeoning romance between Hadley and Oliver. Tucked just below that narrative thread is one about the chasm created between a father and daughter in the wake of a parental affair, a divorce, and a second marriage. Things do not go smoothly but ultimately end well as Hadley concludes, “He’s still her dad. The rest is just geography.” This conclusion literally applies to the ocean separating two different land masses occupied by father and daughter. Metaphorically, it refers to Hadley’s growth in maturity that allows her to recognize the literal chasm separating them is the only one that should matter since, ultimately, no substantive change in their relationship has actually taken place.
