Long Shot

Iris is one of the main characters and first-person narrators of the novel. The chapters titled with her first name are written from her perspective and depict episodes from her storyline. These chapters provide insight into Iris’s inner life and grant access to her personal experience. She is also the female romantic lead.

Iris is in her early twenties at the novel’s start. Just finishing college, Iris feels as if she is on the brink of starting her life. She is diligent, self-motivated, and determined to establish herself outside the context of her past. Iris had a difficult upbringing in Louisiana. She never knew her father, and her home life was defined by her mother Priscilla’s litany of haphazard love affairs. In light of these experiences, Iris developed a close relationship with “her cousin Lotus, the ambitious badass fashion student who always has her back” (14). The two fell out of touch for a time but have rekindled their kinship in the narrative present. Iris relies on her cousin because Lotus knows and understands her like no one else. Throughout the novel, their loving, reciprocal dynamic conveys the