Content Warning: This section features discussions of suicide.

Clementine West, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, remembers when she was eight and her Aunt Analea told her that the Upper East Side apartment her aunt lived in was magical. Clementine had always believed that her exuberant aunt meant the apartment is metaphorically magical, but Analea insisted on the apartment’s real magic.

Clementine recalls Aunt Analea telling her “if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do” (12), a message she takes to heart as she currently sits in a Michelin-starred restaurant called the Olive Branch. Clementine is a senior publicist at Strauss & Adder publishing, and she is there with her best friends Drew—a senior editor—and her pregnant wife Fiona—a designer at the publishing company. Drew planned the lunch in an attempt to speak with the restaurant’s famous chef, James Ashton, who had written an article she loves and with whom she wants to publish a new book. Drew talks about the chef’s talents, and Clementine admits that she hasn’t read his article.

Fiona and Drew ask about Clementine’s love life, and she reveals that she broke up with her boyfriend, Nate, a week ago because he thinks she is too closed off and only cares about her work.