Part 3 of the novel centers on Tom and Anna’s travels and attempts to reclaim their passion for new experiences and cities, their work, and each other, but ultimately speaks to The Problem of Expatriate Exploitation of Local Cultures. It opens hopefully, representing their extreme excitement before each trip, but they quickly experience disappointment as the short-term trips tend to produce exhaustion and make Anna and Tom fall behind on work and go over budget without finding what they are seeking.

On arriving in Lisbon, Anna and Tom are reminded of Berlin, often noticing how the new setting relates to Berlin: With their eyes closed they “breathed in the smell of sea salt and eucalyptus bark” but opened their eyes to see “brushed concrete flooring, the rubber plant, the bar with its Danish redesign, and it felt like they were in Berlin” (99, emphasis added). The idea that cities as different as Berlin and Lisbon can start to seem interchangeable speaks to the homogenizing effects of globalization and expatriate culture and gentrification, with the cities catering more to globe-trotting freelancers like Anna and Tom than to preserving the authentic local culture. Anna and Tom can also feel “like they were in Berlin” because nothing about their lifestyle or their attitude changes, regardless of where they are: They remain detached, transient, and insulated from the local society around them wherever they go.

Anna and Tom’s perspectives on their new city emphasize their lack of awareness about what they really want, reflecting The Negative Effects of Social Media on Intimacy: “It was all different, which was what they had wanted; and yet it was also somehow all the same. They had wanted that too, but still they weren’t satisfied” (102, emphasis added). Instead of engaging in self-reflection and trying to understand what really matters to them, they attempt to reclaim the image of what they wanted through their curated representation of the trips on social media: “[T]he seductiveness of the images made them forget all the stress that lay just out of frame” (95). Thus, in this section of the novel, Anna and Tom attempt to change, but ultimately remain stagnant. They continue to focus on aesthetics and appearances, still unable or unwilling to see that their lives lack authenticity. For Anna and Tom, maintaining the outward image of a perfect life on social media is still more important than having the genuine life they crave.

Latronico highlights that because Anna and Tom’s identity is focused on aesthetic perfection and comparing favorably to others, it is impossible for them to be fully satisfied, invoking The Complexities of Detachment and Authenticity. Like in Berlin, Anna and Tom are constantly trying to shape an ideal life instead of engaging in a meaningful way with their environment and with one another; when they meet new people, they “sized each other up based on where they sat on the scale between tourist and expat” (103). Comparison is once again the ultimately disappointing metric by which they view their lives and experiences.

Part 3’s title, “Remote” has significant connotations that relate to the section’s themes. First, it connotes remote work, the culture of working from home or in coffee shops with good Wi-Fi that is central to Anna and Tom’s experiences as creative professionals. It also suggests remote, far-flung locations and adventures that contrast with the conventional European destinations Anna and Tom actually choose. Remote also alludes to the lack of connection and detachment that characterizes the novel as a whole and, increasingly, Anna and Tom’s relationship.

This section also includes a key moment in Anna and Tom’s relationship: The only instance of conflict between them represented in the novel. Their discontentment with their Sicilian experience prompts them to bicker: “Tom clearly remembered having suggested Greece in the first place […] Anna, feeling hurt, remembered all the reasons she had given for them to stay in Lisbon” (113). The passage is one of very few instances in the novel in which the characters are mentioned individually, rather than as “Anna and Tom.” That they are mentioned apart highlights the disconnect between them at this point in the novel, while the subject of their disagreement reflects just how little they have learned. Instead of realizing that their superficial, unrooted lifestyle no longer suits them, they bicker over which random city they should have chosen for their trip. Anna and Tom therefore remain trapped in cycles of boredom and disappointment, because they are forever seeking the next trendy hotspot or experience instead of focusing more on real connection and meaning.