Pictures of You

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, and death.

“I don’t feel anything. Except guilt that I am not the perfect widow.”

Evie’s feelings of dissonance in the prologue set up the question that will drive the novel: What happened in the years she cannot remember? This sense of discomfort serves as one of many instances of foreshadowing that her relationship with Oliver was not the brilliant romance she initially assumes.

“I do feel safe at sixteen. I have parents who adore me. A best friend who sticks to my side like glue. I have goals and plans and meticulously documented dreams, none of which include waking up thirteen years later with dark hair, posh glasses, and a huge phone, totally isolated from everything in the entire world that ever mattered to me.”

This immediate contrast between Evie now and Evie then creates the central mystery that Evie will work to resolve. Given Evie’s lack of memories, which would provide the logical narrative explaining how she ended up where she is, the novel asks what elements constitute our core identity. The experiences of various primary and secondary characters answer this question in different ways.

“It’s just me: Evie Hudson. Fish out of water in a dimension where I’ve signed up for everything in life that I categorically oppose and totally lost track of my own narrative.”

This metaphor of a fish out of water demonstrates Evie’s sense of dissonance at waking up in a life she doesn’t recognize, which provides her character conflict and arc for the present-day timeline. The reference to a narrative points to the theme of Language and Story as Building Blocks of Identity. Evie wants a life that has its own dramatic arc, conflict, and character development, just like a novel. Evie’s amnesia allows her to look at her adult life from the