Chapter 1 Summary, Analysis, and Key Takeaways
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Chapter One opens with a direct address to the reader, comparing the start of a novel to a first date—the hope for urgent magic tempered by the expectation of having to learn names and follow along politely. This metafictional frame sets the tone for a chapter that is deeply concerned with storytelling, point of view, and the distance between how we experience events and how we narrate them.
The narrative then moves to Margo's baby shower, hosted by Tessa, the owner of the restaurant where Margo works. Tessa, an accomplished baker, has made a hand-carved, three-dimensional penis cake with twelve layers of sponge and pink icing, complete with a hand pump that spurts white pudding when squeezed. The joke is aimed at Margo's situation—nineteen, unmarried, pregnant by her professor—and Tessa whoops with glee when the pudding spurts. Margo pretends to laugh but later cries in the bathroom. The narrative explains that Tessa is both mean and loving: once, after learning the salad boy had no sense of taste or smell, she served him shaving cream and potting soil as a fake dessert. Margo understands that Tessa's impulse is to turn tragedy into carnival, but she recognizes that the only love available to her is inadequate and painful.
Margo's mother, Shyanne, had suggested abortion, and her professor had been hysterical about it. Margo realizes she wasn't sure she wanted the baby so much as she wanted to prove to both of them that they couldn't bend her to their will—though it never occurred to her that they might simply stop interacting with her.
When Margo goes into labor, Shyanne arrives four hours late because she was driving around town looking for the perfect teddy bear. She works at Bloomingdale's and presents a white bear with a constipated face, doing a squeaky voice. She then sits in the corner playing PokerStars on her phone all night. A nurse mocks Margo's choice of the name Bodhi, and Shyanne slaps the nurse across the jaw, causing a kerfuffle. This slap becomes the moment Margo feels most loved by her mother, a memory she replays for years.
The birth itself is described with unflinching detail: the epidural, the lemon-flavored sponge given instead of ice chips, pushing and pooping on the table, the OB's disgusted expression. When Bodhi is placed on her chest—six pounds, scrawny, with legs like a tadpole's—Margo loves him so much it makes her ears ring.
After release from the hospital, Margo panics. Shyanne can't help her home (she's also banned from the hospital after the slap), so Margo drives alone with the baby squalling in his car seat, feeling like she's robbing a bank. She parks on the street, can't figure out the car seat release mechanism, and after five minutes of panicking, remembers she can just unfasten him. She sets him on the passenger seat to load her bags, then waddles up to her apartment at Park Place—slumped brown buildings behind a gas station. She climbs the outside stairs terrified she'll drop him, greets her roommate Suzie, and finally makes it to her room to nurse Bodhi, feeling like she's been to war. She thinks