The abrupt narrative shifts between the 17th-century Dog-Woman, the 20th-century Nicolas Jordan, and an unnamed female chemist establish the novel’s nonlinear structure and central argument about time. After months in the Navy, Nicolas stands on a Thames tug when he is approached by a man in archaic clothes, implied to be Tradescant. In this moment of temporal collapse, Nicolas declares, “My name is Jordan” (123), solidifying the link between the two characters as a shared or reincarnated identity. This uncanny fusion is mirrored by the 1990s chemist, who recalls a vision of 17th-century London while standing on Waterloo Bridge. These experiences are presented as breaches in the fabric of linear chronology. The novel provides its own theoretical key to this structure when Jordan tells his mother about the Hopi, a tribe whose language lacks tenses, for whom time is a unified whole. This anecdote suggests the theme of Time as a Simultaneous Reality, a core postmodern concept the novel’s form embodies. By braiding these distinct narratives, the text rejects sequential history in favor of a fluid coexistence of past and present in which identities overlap.

The parallel narratives of the Dog-Woman and the 1990s chemist connect size and appearance to self-determination and political rage. The Dog-Woman recounts a sexual encounter where her partner, feeling “like a tadpole in a pot,” (108) is physically overwhelmed by her size, an inversion of the conventional power dynamics of heteronormative views on intercourse. Her mass is her power. Similarly, the chemist explains that as a lonely, overlooked child, she grew fat because she “wanted to be bigger than all the things that were bigger than me” (126), a conscious strategy of taking up space to resist being powerless. Though she later loses the physical weight, she cultivates a giant “alter ego” who acts out her activist frustrations in elaborate fantasies, such as stuffing world leaders from the Pentagon and World Bank into a sack to force them to address global crises. These narratives demonstrate Physical Power as a Tool of Defiance, turning the female body into a site of resistance. The motif of weight and lightness is reconfigured as weight becomes a source of agency and strength.

The intertwined stories of Jordan and Nicolas explore the nature of heroism through the motif of journeys and maps, contrasting the age of discovery with modern ennui. Nicolas’s decision to join the Navy is fueled by romantic artifacts: a 17th-century painting of the pineapple, The Observer’s Book of Ships, and a childhood copy of The Boys’ Book of Heroes. He yearns for a life of consequence, one defined by navigating by the stars and making grand discoveries. This desire for an authentic, heroic journey is complicated by the appearance of Tradescant, who laments that he has “missed the world, that the one I’ve seen is a decoy” (115). Tradescant suggests that physical travel does not guarantee true discovery and that the mapped world may conceal a deeper, unmappable reality. Nicolas’s journey is thus framed as a search for an authentic truth, questioning whether the heroic paths of the past are still accessible in a modern world that feels fully charted and demystified.

Within this framework of intersecting realities, the novel presents storytelling as a primary tool for liberation. Jordan tells his mother a story from Fortunata, a woman who “does not exist,” (133) about the goddess Artemis. This retelling of the myth of Orion reframes the narrative from the goddess’s perspective, focusing on her experience of sexual assault, her calculated revenge, and her subsequent transformation. After killing her attacker, Artemis feels her past is “irredeemable,” yet she also crosses the “frontiers of common sense” (137) to achieve a new, self-defined safety. This act of reinterpretation exemplifies the process of Reclaiming Agency Through Storytelling. By seizing control of the narrative, Fortunata transforms a myth about male conquest into a story of female survival and psychological rebirth. This metafictional layer echoes the Dog-Woman’s own authorial voice; throughout her narration, she frames her violent acts, such as murdering her father when he tries to sell her, as necessary executions in the service of “justice” (132). In both instances, storytelling becomes a way to rewrite history and assert an autonomous identity against oppressive patriarchal structures.

The arrival of the first pineapple in England is a symbol that connects the historical and modern narratives while interrogating the nature of discovery. In 1661, the fruit is a true marvel, a “historic occasion” that disrupts the royal court and signifies the introduction of a completely new reality into the known world. For Jordan and his contemporaries, the pineapple is tangible proof of a vast, exotic world beyond their shores. In 1990, however, Nicolas Jordan becomes obsessed with a painting of this event and buys his own pineapple, hoping to recapture that original sense of wonder. He fails, lamenting, “I tried to look at a pineapple and pretend I’d never seen one before. I couldn’t do it” (112). This failure illustrates a key postmodern anxiety: in a world saturated with images and information, authentic, unmediated experience becomes nearly impossible. The symbol of the pineapple thus highlights the gap between a world of genuine discovery and a modern one where such moments exist primarily as historical artifacts to be consumed secondhand. It questions what it means to be an explorer when the globe has already been mapped, and its wonders cataloged and commodified.