Content Warning: The source text depicts domestic violence, pregnancy loss, rape, and death by suicide, which this section of the guide discusses.

Helen is the novel’s protagonist and one of the first-person narrators. She’s an upper-class, conventional, morally inclined person with strict beliefs about what makes a good parent and a good life for a child. As a pregnant woman who’s previously had four miscarriages, Helen’s ideas about motherhood and childrearing are central to the novel. Her ideas also evolve throughout the text, elaborating on The Meaning of Parenthood. At first, Helen doesn’t believe that her younger brother, Charlie, who had a child by accident and is a DJ, deserves to be a parent. Likewise, she has doubts about Rachel’s ability to parent, because of her drinking, smoking, single-parent status, and unconventional personality. By the end of the novel, Helen learns that good parenthood is more complex than she thought and cannot be measured in terms of money, career choices, relationship status, place of residence, adherence to conventional rules, or other simplistic factors. In reality, many of the people who Helen originally thought would be suitable parents turn out to be some of the most dangerous people imaginable.