Perfect Strangers

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

As Perfect Strangers begins, Olivia Rossi is questioning her identity. In the wake of her daughter’s death, her identities as both mother and wife have been destroyed and her writing career impacted. Olivia sees herself as a writer, mother, and wife, but as each of these identities is threatened, she finds herself discovering new aspects of her self that, in her mind, conflict with her previous understanding of herself as a strong, intellectual woman. Through Olivia’s exploration of her sexual needs and desires, the novel works to dismantle her notion that she cannot be a strong, intellectual woman and also one who tests the limits of her sexual identity.

From the outset, sex is central to the narrative, but at first, Olivia is an outsider and observer. The novel’s opening image is of Olivia watching Gigi and Gaspard have sex, and Olivia tries to distance herself from the sexual exploits of her neighbors, saying, “Let’s just say this particular behavior wasn’t in my repertoire at that age” (13). The next morning, however, after Olivia meets James, Gigi and Gaspard’s sex life becomes an entry point for her own desires, and she masturbates while thinking of him.