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Part 1, Chapter 1: March 6, 2007
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nineteen Minutes, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Victims vs. Perpetrators
Vengeance vs. Justice
Expectations and the Failures of Family
Lost Innocence
Appearances vs. Reality
Summary
Analysis
Lacy is teaching a prenatal class in the first week back at work after her own maternity leave. Earlier in life she had considered training to be an OB/GYN, but after realizing that she had trouble stopping herself from feeling her patients’ pain, she decided to be a nurse-midwife instead. A woman standing at the back wearing a black suit says that she’s sorry, but she has to leave early. She hands Lacy the forms each member of the class is required to fill out, and Lacy sees that her name is Alex Cormier. Alex, meanwhile, is currently representing a repeat offender who recently committed a brutal assault against a drug dealer.
Recall that the narrator said that everyone in the town of Sterling knows each other and has always known each other, like a family. Here, it becomes clear that Lacy and Alex knew each other as new mothers, indicating that their children may have grown up in close proximity, too.
Themes
Lacy expected her second son, Peter, to be a “golden boy” like Joey, her first. Instead, Peter is a difficult baby who cries, refuses to breastfeed, and resists going to sleep. Lacy’s husband Lewis is famous for having devised a mathematical formula for happiness: R/E, which means “Reality divided by Expectations.” Right now, Lacy tires to assure herself that she doesn’t feel happy only because she is so exhausted, and that really, her life is wonderful. After Peter falls asleep, she finds herself hoping that he will grow up to be like Joey.
At this point, it remains unclear whether Joey and Peter’s differences as babies will translate into similar differences when they grow up. After all, just because someone was a “difficult” baby hardly means that they are going to grow up into a troublesome adult. At the same time, a baby’s personality can set the tone for how their parents view them later in life, too.
Themes
The next time Lacy sees Alex—who, at 24, is younger than Lacy initially assumed—Alex explains that she is a public defender. Alex also explains that she doesn’t plan on keeping the baby, but that she’s already missed her abortion appointment twice. Lacy tries to be supportive, asking if Alex’s partner also wants to give the baby up for adoption, but Alex replies, “There is no partner.” The father of Alex’s baby is her trial advocacy professor, Logan Rourke. Logan used to flirt with her, and Alex idolized him. He made her believe that he was in love with her and that his marriage was already over. However, he soon lost interest, and when she became pregnant, Logan told her to have an abortion. When Alex accidentally missed both her appointments, she decided to interpret this as a “sign.”
Alex is far from a stereotypical character. She gets pregnant at a somewhat young age while she is not in a relationship, and she is also remarkably high-achieving in her career, with a law degree under her belt already at the age of 24. Perhaps her focus on her career is part of the reason that she doesn’t want to keep the baby. At the same time, her decision not to keep it doesn’t quite seem to be her own, and seems more to be the result of pressure exerted by Logan.
Themes
Alex spots Lacy at the courthouse paying a parking ticket, surprised to see her carrying a baby of her own. The women agree to get coffee, and while they sit and talk, Lacy breastfeeds Peter. Alex asks if motherhood is difficult, and Lacy replies that it takes some learning, but that compared to Alex’s job, “motherhood is probably a piece of cake.” They discuss Alex’s plan to give up the baby, and Lacy gently points out that there is never really a good time in life to have a child. At one point, Lacy quickly hands Peter to Alex so she can go to the bathroom. Peter starts crying, and Alex panics. However, he soon quiets down, and Alex feels stunned by how “easy” motherhood suddenly seems.
Lacy’s comment about motherhood being “a piece of cake” compared to Alex’s job as a public defender highlights how these two wildly different skillsets cannot actually be compared. One cannot be said to be more difficult than the other, simply because they are so different. Alex’s fears about being mother seem to revolve around the fact that motherhood is not something that one receives formal training or instruction for—rather, it largely operates according to instinct.
Themes
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Months later, while Lacy is attending a birth, she gets a message on her pager saying that one of her patients is insisting on seeing her—it’s Alex. Ordinarily, Lacy would assign someone else to see Alex, but she senses that something is wrong with Alex and thus, after delivering twin daughters, she goes to see Alex herself. When she arrives, Alex explains that she’s experienced some bleeding. After checking, Lacy explains that the baby is fine, which is a huge relief to Alex, who says she was worried she was having a miscarriage. Lacy points out that Alex’s anxiety indicates that she might want to keep this baby after all.
Alex is one of many characters in the novel—her daughter Josie being one of the most significant among them—who experience confusion about their own desires. This is often the result of feeling torn between trying to live up to the expectations of others and figuring out what one wants beneath all that, which can be especially difficult after a lifetime of trying to please others.
Themes
That night, Alex burns all the assignments she ever did for Logan and vows that her baby will be entirely hers. Within the next five weeks, she and Lacy become best friends. When Alex asks Lacy to go on a “girls night out” with her friends from work, Lacy accepts begrudgingly, horrified by the idea of spending the evening with a group of lawyers. One of the women asks Lacy about her opinion on aliens, and after Lacy gives a long answer about Area 51 and government conspiracies, the woman clarifies that she meant illegal aliens. Alex quickly intervenes, changing the subject and making everyone laugh again, and it occurs to Lacy that she is a “chameleon” who can fit in anywhere.
Note that, while Alex envied Lacy’s relaxed, natural aptitude as a mother, Lacy envies Alex’s ability to move between multiple worlds. This frames Lacy as a grounded, instinctive person who has a clear sense of who she is, but who can feel self-conscious about not being smart, glamorous, or impressive enough. Alex, meanwhile, is much less sure of herself, but this lack of certainty also has upsides, as she can behave as a kind of chameleon.
Themes
During Alex’s prenatal exam, Lacy informs her that the baby is breech. She might need a caesarean, but they will try other options in hope of avoiding this. After, Alex gives one of her clients, a single mother named Nadya whose abusive husband doesn’t pay child support, a ride to court. Nadya had shoplifted an outfit from Walmart so that her five-year-old son had something to wear to school. When Alex finds Nadya crying because her period has started and she can’t afford tampons, Alex drives her to Walmart and buys her three giant boxes of Tampax, along with clothing and food. She spends $800 in total, all the while knowing that public defenders are not supposed to do this. In her head, she can hear Logan accusing her of being too soft.
In this passage, Alex seems to be embodying the warning that if a person cares too much for others, then they might be left unable to take care of themselves. This is conveyed through the combination of her generosity to Nadya and her baby being breech. Although pregnant mothers themselves do not cause babies to be breech, it is clear that—while for some women, pregnancy becomes a time to focus on themselves and their baby—Alex remains totally committed to serving others in her community, particularly the less fortunate.
Themes
During the birthing classes that Alex and Lacy attended together, Alex said that she wanted to have a natural birth. However, now that Alex is actually in labor, she is in so much pain that she thinks she will have to kill herself rather than endure it. Lacy assures Alex that she will be fine; she knows that labor is especially difficult for women like her who like to be in control. Alex makes Lacy promise not to tell the baby that at first Alex didn’t want her. For a while, Alex is fine thanks to the epidural, but when the baby starts coming she frantically tells Lacy that she is not ready to have a baby. However, at this moment the baby emerges, and Lacy hands her to Alex, saying, “She’s all yours.”
This is the very first moment when Alex expresses fear about what her child will think of her, an important concept in the novel. Almost all of the characters are fixated on how other people perceive them. As Alex and Josie’s relationship will show, this includes parents, who—perhaps counterintuitively—can worry about the judgment of their own children. Of course, on one level Alex is right to worry about Josie thinking she didn’t want her—yet the end of the passage indicates that this all changes after she gives birth.
Themes
