Perfect Strangers

Content Warning: This section contains discussion of mental illness, illness, child death, death, violence, graphic sexual content, and cursing.

“[T]he past is a living, breathing entity that exists apart from our wishes or best intentions. It’s not gone, and it’s certainly not invisible. Its fingerprints are smeared all over every moment of the present, its weight drags on every second of the future, its consequences echo down every hallway of our lives.”

The grotesque representation of “the past” hints at Olivia’s traumatic history and reality. The repetition of “every” creates an insistent tone that indicates its constant presence. Olivia dramatically emphasizes the role of the past to hint at the intense role it plays in her life.

“My libido died along with everything else that mattered. Except for yesterday, when a stranger’s searing blue gaze lit me up like a Christmas tree and sent shockwaves of heat pulsing straight through my core.”

Due to the graphic sexual content, the novel qualifies as erotica, emphasizing the novel’s play with several different genres. Olivia and James’s sexual chemistry drives the plot. James awakens Olivia’s “libido,” which, in turn, powers their relationship and the story.

“I couldn’t even manage the two syllables that would be required for ‘hello.’ This person is not healthy for me to be around.”

At the cocktail party, Olivia is awkward around James. Geissinger regularly uses Olivia to highlight the differences between a writer’s image and their reality, highlighting the theme of Shaping Reality Through Storytelling. Olivia works with words, but she often can’t find the right or concise words to describe James. As the story continues, this statement is revealed to have a double meaning: James isn’t “healthy” for Olivia because he’s a product of her mental illness.