Death Row

For much of the text, death row is the setting of the narrative, the place where Talia is awaiting execution for the murder of her husband. As the text progresses, however, it reveals that Talia is not, in fact, on death row, but has been “imprisoned” in a coma following a car accident. Death row is thus a symbol of Talia’s guilty conscience, a place she is unable to free herself from because she is trapped in a comatose state.

Early on in the text, Talia maintains her unequivocal innocence: “How could anyone think that I killed Noel? I had no motive—he was the love of my life. And most of all, I have an alibi. Yet here I am, about to be executed for his murder” (9-10). The idea that she is on death row for Noel’s murder is absurd to Talia, who states not only that she loved her husband but that she had an alibi for the night of his murder.

Through a series of dream-like flashback chapters, it becomes clear that Talia has obscured the whole truth from the reader, and that she did in fact set the stage for Noel’s death by explosion: “I turned on the gas in our house.