Five Total Strangers

“Without meaning to, I picture my aunt’s hand in mine, thin and waxy and bruised with old IV sites. This is not the memory I’d choose. Aunt Phoebe and I had great memories. Making homemade fudge. Trying on scarves. Playing together with her paints and color wheels. All these beautiful pieces of my aunt are smudged and watery, but those days from a year ago, the last ones we spent together—they come at me in high definition.”

Introducing the theme of Unexplored Grief, Mira reflects on her aunt’s death from cancer a year before. Mira focuses on her mother’s grief more than her own, although memories like this one, full of sensory, specific, emotional details, show that her aunt’s death has had a profound impact on Mira. This plays an important role in the novel, as Mira proceeds under the impression that she has dealt with her own grief and that it was not as important as her mother’s grief. In reality, Mira’s unacknowledged grief changes the way she views people around her and causes her to fail to listen to her instincts and protect herself from impending danger.

“I don’t need to talk to anyone to know what’s happening here. Weary travelers. Tangles of charging cables. Passengers sleeping under suit coats. Cots being moved into the waiting areas. I spot the Arrivals and Departures sign on a nearby wall but I don’t bother getting close. There’s no point in checking for Pittsburgh or possible alternate flights. Every flight has the same status. Canceled.”

The premise of the novel is that Mira cannot get home because of a snowstorm. As Mira lands in Newark, she discovers the chaos that comes with the stranding of hundreds of travelers. Mira is already concerned about being with her mother on the anniversary of her aunt’s death, so the prospect of being stuck in the airport leads Mira to make a decision that both sets the plot of the novel in motion and shows Mira’s desperation and naive decision-making process.