Dream State

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, mental illness, and cursing.

“[Cece] coiled a pair of brown socks into a cinnamon bun and then put it in the top drawer of the Margolises’ dresser, which smelled like mothballs. A woman with a messy sock drawer was a woman in crisis, she thought to herself. Or maybe the opposite was true: a woman who coiled her socks was secretly unraveling.”

Though Cece outwardly appears to look forward to her upcoming marriage, inwardly, she is lost. Not only is she unsure about what career to pursue, but, though she does not yet realize it, she also has doubts about marrying Charlie. Her outward neatness contrasts with her inner state, just as the image of a cinnamon bun contrasts with the unpleasant smell of mothballs. The mothball-smelling drawer is a hostile environment for a cinnamon bun, and this image foreshadows that the Margolis family—and her upcoming marriage to Charlie—will not be the right fit for Cece.

“And it wasn’t just Charlie he feared. The whole gang would be there, everyone he’d lived with at Middlebury. Garrett had avoided them, more or less successfully, since college. He couldn’t bear to talk about Elias—or worse, watch them dance around the subject, pretending their friend had never existed.”

Garrett has never again felt comfortable around his friends since the accidental death of their friend Elias, for which he blames himself. The event casts a constant shadow, present whenever they are together even if no one mentions it. Silences of this kind—sources of pain that are ever-present but rarely discussed—form a key motif in the novel, shaping the lives of its characters.

“When I see you it fills me with the opposite of disgust, which I know doesn’t exactly sound like high praise but for me is sort of like the return to the world. It’s like I stop being a mess of exploded thoughts for a second and am just happy to be human.

In the email to Cece in which Garrett reveals that he is in love with her, he explains the way he finds her presence transformative. There is something inexplicable that lifts his depression and suddenly causes Garrett to feel alive once again, in ways he has not felt since the death of Elias.