63 pages • 2 hours read
The Unraveling of Julia
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Character Analysis
Content Warning: This section contains discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, mental illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and substance use.
Julia Pritzker and Mike Shallette
Julia, sometimes called Jules, is the titular protagonist of Scottoline’s novel. She is 32 with a Cancer Sun, Sagittarius Moon, and Virgo Rising in her astrological chart. She runs “a small business designing and maintaining websites” (5). Julia knows she was adopted, and her adoptive mother Melanie Mortssen Pritzker died when Julia turned 10. Julia’s adoptive father Martin James Pritzker died when Julia was in college. Julia met her husband, Michael Aaron Shallette, in college. He loves cars, is a sports fan, and went on to become a lawyer. When he is 32, the year before they were planning to try to have a baby, he is murdered in front of Julia.
After Mike is murdered, Julia becomes obsessed with astrology and starts seeing a therapist named Susanna Cobb. Julia is diagnosed with “situational depression and generalized anxiety, with a dash of PTSD” (24). She struggles to go outside. However, her best friend Courtney convinces her to go to Italy to find her birth mother. There, Julia is drugged and her psychic powers are awakened. For a while, she “didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t” (162). She hesitates to begin a romance with Gianluca and struggles to enjoy life.
