Fiona in Girl One: Character Analysis

Overview of Fiona in Girl One: Character Analysis and Role in the Story — Sara Flannery Murphy's Girl One (2021) presents Fiona as the youngest of the nine Homesteader girls, born to Lily-Anne in April 1975 and completing the set that Josephine began. The public record holds that she died alongside Dr. Joseph Bellanger in the June 1977 fire that destroyed the Homestead, but the novel reveals she survived and was raised in secret by Bellanger in a remote desert compound. Fiona possesses telekinetic powers—the most dramatic of any of the Girls—and by the time Josephine tracks her down in 1994, she is pregnant and has become Bellanger's devoted protégée, speaking in his cadences and defending his version of events. Her arc is the novel's central mystery and its final confrontation, tying together the themes of scientific legacy and the ownership of creation, mother-daughter estrangement and hidden maternal histories, and reproductive autonomy and bodily control. For a full walkthrough of how her story resolves, see the ending explained page, or browse common reader questions. This analysis distinguishes what the novel states explicitly from interpretive readings grounded in the text. Return to the main book page.