The Expatriates

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child loss and kidnapping.

After the loss of G, Margaret rents a secret apartment and spends her days there, away from her family home. The apartment symbolizes her grief, and her shifting attitude toward the apartment signifies her healing process. The apartment is in the working-class neighborhood of “Happy Valley,” an ironic name given that Margaret’s unhappiness drives her toward it. The room is tiny and old, so small that it has a bathtub but no sink. Margaret devotes time to cleaning it, even scrubbing “at the corners with a toothbrush” (26)—another irony since she has a housekeeper for her family home. She enjoys this pointless labor: “Everything she did there made her happy. The hours stolen there vanished into some forgotten morass of her life” (26). Lying in bed during the day when her family is at work or school, she feels “at home,” thinking “about what her life would be if she only had this life, this one room, this one place” (26). The apartment is a place for Margaret alone, and it doesn’t remind her of her missing son or the demands of her living children.