Jackie slowly occupies Grace’s space, taking away her spot on the sofa, her kitchen, and then so much more.īut because it’s all set during lockdown, where days slip seamlessly one into the next, these intrusions feel bigger, hit more personally.
The things that are difficult to get mad at but still feel like an invasion. But it’s the small details that often hit the hardest. Jackie moves things, rearranges various areas, hangs pictures on the wall, all with the innocent defense of simply trying to help. Where neither can escape the other, and they have to find a way to make peace or suffer.Įven if you have a good relationship with your parents, the small irritations of being back with a parent were vivid and completely understandable. It’s an internal war made volatile by the forced proximity. Grace fights against this resemblance while yearning for Jackie to finally see her, to finally accept her. And no matter what you do, or who you think you’ve become, when faced with that person, you can’t help but see pieces of yourself in them. But no one can quite escape the people who raised them. In some ways they’re practically strangers.
Inside the house, the relationship between Jackie and Grace is tumultuous at best. When we hold on to these perspectives, convinced that only we understand the situation perfectly, undoing the damage is rarely easy. We’re thrown back inside our four walls, and page by page, Stage closes the walls in. The days filled with worry, unsurety, and the constant thread of fear woven through every day and night. Inside the story, it’s all too easy to slip back into the horror of lockdown. I think it’s an important note, and one worth mentioning here, as the parallels to a reality we’re still mired in may be too much for some. It will feel eerily familiar, but pieces of it may not. Stage makes a note at the beginning, that while this is a book about the pandemic, it isn’t meant to fully encompass or encapsulate our pandemic. It’s in that foreboding tone that we move into the story, to the beginning of the pandemic and into Grace’s life. Stage doesn’t tell us what happens, or who it happens to, but thanks to a gripping prologue, we know it’s horrific. From the very beginning, we know one of the characters meets a bad end. Haunted by the ghosts of her past, Grace can’t escape the threat she invited in: mom. But when her mother accuses her of the unthinkable, it sends Grace into a spiral of doubt and madness. Old wounds become infected and new injuries bleed fresh. Until they’re exposed to the virus and have to quarantine. And since buying her new house, the only way she can keep making payments is with her mother’s help. But then again, she never thought the world would be shut down for a global pandemic. Grace never thought she’d say yes to her mother moving in with her.
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