47 pages • 1-hour read
Perfect Strangers
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Themes
Exploring the Intersection of Feminism and Sexual Desire
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. The presence of James, and the ongoing exhibitions of Gigi and Gaspard, subvert the boundaries she has tried to build between herself and their sexual behavior. Olivia says, “I bite my lip and squeeze my eyes shut like a guilty child caught with her hand in the cookie jar” (37). She feels like she’s breaking the rules (stealing a cookie) because she can’t align her sexual desires with her identity as she understands it.
Her relationship with James continues to cause her to question her identity, as she continues to wonder how she can be an intellectual feminist woman and, at the same time, engage in boundary-pushing sex. As Olivia puts it, “I consider myself a feminist. I have a college degree. Several, in fact. Yet here I am, wallowing in how fantastic it feels to hear you call my boobs cantaloupes” (95). During sex, Olivia feels lost, but her abandonment links to the passion of the moment—it’s not a reflection of a substantial personality change. Olivia explains, “[T]he logical part of my brain blinks offline, leaving me feeling wild, uninhibited, and blindingly alive” (149-50). The sex with James turns Olivia into a primitive creature, allowing her to step outside of her self-proclaimed identity. As Olivia covets and consents to the animalistic sex, the transformation isn’t degrading; the departure from human logic brings pleasure. Far from being degrading or antithetical to her identity, her surrender to James and the power of her sexual desire offers liberation from herself and societal conventions.
In the end, Olivia realizes that sex doesn’t always have a rational basis; however, sex doesn’t pose a threat to her core identity. James spanks her and they have sexual contact in public while Olivia remains an empowered woman. She discovers that engaging in and celebrating her sexual needs and desires doesn’t negate her identity as a strong, independent, intellectual woman.
The Pleasure of Mystery
Mystery is a defining element of Olivia and James’s relationship. As they begin to get closer, Olivia outlines the terms of their relationship: “No personal questions. No pressure. No strings. In fact, let’s not even exchange last names” (121). The stipulations restrict information, and the lack of sharing accelerates their attraction. In the novel, ignorance and secrets aren’t presented as negatives; rather, they propel Olivia and James’s connection. The ambiguity created by this framework allows Olivia and James to turn each other into enticing fantasies. James thinks of Olivia as a beautiful but melancholy woman. Olivia turns James into a sex icon—her “rugged blue-eyed stallion” (37). By consciously restricting their knowledge of each other, Olivia and James build a new level of attraction.
As the novel continues, withholding information creates mutual fetishization, while the sustained mystery heightens their infatuation. Incited by the lack of “pressure” and “strings,” Olivia and James exhibit intense freedom in their sexual relationship. Olivia believes, “This casual summer fling has the potential to burn the whole city down” (157). The quote creates a paradox, with the unthreatening words “casual” and “fling” conflicting with the violent imagery of Paris burning to the ground. If Olivia and James were having a “casual summer fling,” they’d be harmless, so Paris would be safe. The mystery makes their relationship neither “casual” nor “tranquil.” The enigma that surrounds their relationship creates a feeling of volatility that, for Olivia, creates the sense that the whole world must be affected by its intensity.
However, that intensity is defused with the revelation that Olivia isn’t in Paris with James, but rather, in a psychiatric hospital. Her experience there stands in stark contrast to the romance and mystery of the earlier chapters. In the psychiatric center, Olivia loses the privilege of mystery. Dr. Chevalier monitors her mental state, Ernest helps her with her bodily functions, and the other characters—Kelly, Chris, and Maria—are aware of both her ALS and what happened to Emerson. Olivia’s time in Paris is revealed to be a fantasy that counteracts her reality, as the deprivation of mystery in the hospital motivates Olivia to fantasize about a relationship that’s built on the denial of personal information. Through this shifting framework, the narrative highlights the titillation of mystery by illustrating how intensifies Olivia’s experiences in Paris and, by way of contrast, how a lack of mystery dulls her life in the psychiatric hospital.
Shaping Reality Through Storytelling
Olivia is a fiction writer, and the narrative of Perfect Strangers regularly draws attention to her occupation, providing frequent hints that the book is manipulating reality. Kelly tells Olivia, “You’re a fiction writer. You make things up for a living. And you exaggerate more than anyone else I know” (90). With comments like these, the novel establishes a tension between fiction and reality from the outset, playing with the notion of truth and the power of storytelling through both the structural framework and the characters’ attention to the issues.
For most of the novel, Olivia and James’s time in Paris is the central narrative. Geissinger presents it as a true story, an assertion supported by the actual characters: James instructs Olivia, “Write down what you feel. Everything you feel—about Paris, about life, about me—from now until September” (326). With his statement, the narrative implies that Olivia’s documentation of her affair with James eventually becomes the novel Until September. Although it is marketed and presented as fiction, the novel seems to contain the truth of their relationship, with their identities and truths hidden by its seemingly fictional narrative.
However, the tension between fiction and reality is reinvigorated by Olivia’s agent, Estelle. Regardless of how real the story behind Olivia’s fiction is, Estelle insists on a boundary between story and reality. She refers to Olivia’s books as a “manuscript,” defining it as a separate object, distinct from Olivia and her personal life, creating space between the two. Additionally, Estelle wants Olivia to use a pen name, further distancing her personal life from her work. While Estelle’s suggestion is motivated by her marketing sensibilities, her advice also implies that Olivia shouldn’t identify too closely with the stories she tells. She shouldn’t confuse her work with reality.
When the narrative shifts to Olivia’s life in the psychiatric center, the story further comments on storytelling and reality. The novel reveals that to escape her situation, she has built a world that emphasizes what she lacks—sexual desire and mystery. The “fantasy,” doesn’t represent a complete break from her real life—the people around her in the psychiatric center serve as inspiration for the people in Paris reality. They are, however, very different from their Parisian counterparts, highlighting the capacity of storytelling to reshape reality.
The Epilogue reveals yet another layer of storytelling with the revelation that Olivia’s time at the psychiatric hospital is a fictional frame for her Parisian story. It highlights how Olivia does and doesn’t shape reality through a behind-the-scenes atmosphere in which Olivia and Estelle discuss how Olivia’s book uses people from her real life. James is real, but she exaggerates his masculinity by giving him, among other traits, dramatic professions. James, a painter, reminds her, “[Y]ou’ve already made me a rock star, a bodyguard, a Special-Ops badass, an Italian fashion tycoon, the head of a bourbon empire” (565). As Olivia and Estelle reveal this final layer, the novel’s exploration becomes more nuanced, revealing the story’s ability to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality.
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