All That Life Can Afford

“I’d never been a great actor or a convincing liar, and an American in Britain will always be scrutinized. I prayed the ticket inspector might think I was an idiot, like all Americans, and not a crook, like most of the people he found on the train to Brighton without a ticket to cover their fare.”

The opening lines of Anna Byrne’s first-person narrative account foreshadow her attempts to be someone she’s not. In this scene, Anna tries to charm the ticket inspector so she doesn’t have to pay for her ticket, which she can’t afford. She admits that she’s a bad “actor” and “liar,” but she deceives the inspector anyway. This behavior portends her coming decision to hide behind a facade to gain acceptance from her new wealthy friends.

“It was a long time before I realized this magical place was a real country, just across the ocean from Massachusetts. She laughed when I asked her—was England like Neverland?—and soon it became a teasing sort of joke between us. England was a dream place, but one that maybe I would someday get to visit.”

Anna’s flashback to her childhood captures her lifelong interest in London, England. Since she was a little girl, the place has represented magic to her. Her conviction that London was like Neverland—the magical world from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan—conveys why Anna is so attached to the setting in the narrative present. She has finally realized her girlhood dream of traveling to this place; in turn, she hopes that the city will remake her.

“In the end, when I’d told him I was leaving, there’d been no official falling-out. It had felt more like a splitting open, like the dried husk of my worn-out family had finally, with one last tap, cleaved apart and released me. And still, sometimes I missed the feeling of enclosure. It was a thing I hadn’t yet found a replacement for.”

Anna’s reflections on her relationship with her dad speak to her desire for belonging. Her mother’s death and her subsequent estrangement from her father have augmented her sense of alienation. Although she’s made it to London, she still longs for “the feeling of enclosure” a family might provide her.