![]() ![]() The alternating narration builds tension as the two both live their separate lives and recollect their fragile bond, giving readers access to the closely observed emotions of each, something neither has. By the time they reconnect, Lucy’s moving abroad, while Owen and his newly unemployed dad are heading west. When Lucy wakes up, Owen’s gone his dad needs help managing the blackout’s aftermath. They ramble the crowded streets before ascending to the roof, where they fall asleep under a starry sky. ![]() The blackout continues after they’re rescued, and dealing with it together shatters the cocoon each lives in. With her affluent parents abroad and her brothers newly away at college, Lucy’s long-standing loneliness has acquired a sharp edge. Grief over his mother’s death has numbed Owen to his changed life-moving from rural Pennsylvania with his father, now the building’s superintendent. Their brief ordeal’s long enough for them to connect while their defenses are down. Lucy and Owen live in the same Manhattan building but don’t meet until they’re stuck in a sweltering elevator during a blackout. As she did in The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight (2012), Smith fashions long-distance travel into a metaphor for the leaps of faith that love demands. ![]()
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