Mim’s search for identity drives much of the novel. As a self-described anomaly and outlier, she starts the novel without any friends. Without the influence of a peer group, she derives much of her identity from her mother. At times, it’s even difficult to know where she ends and her mother begins, as evidenced by the symbolic dream in which she and her mother morph into the same person while standing in front of the mirror: “I am not me, I said to the […] face in the mirror. And it was true. In the dream, the reflection staring back was not my own. It was my mother’s” (200).

Everything that her mother adores, she loves as well. This loyalty to her mom drives a wedge between her and her dad. When her dad put her on medication, her mom objected, and so did Mim. When her dad disapproved of Eve’s potentially inappropriate comments to Mim, she sided with her mom. When the divorce dissolves the family, Mim blames her dad and Kathy because she views her mom as the victim. Only at the end of the book, after Mim learns the truth about her mom’s condition, does she realize maybe it hasn’t always been her dad’s fault.