“The place is like that: a mix of familiar and very much not familiar.”

August isn’t quite sure what a home is supposed to be like. She has so few belongings at the start of the novel. However, Myla, Niko, and, to some extent, Wes seem to have their lives figured out. Their confidence is at first odd to August; however, she comes to appreciate it in her friends, especially as they become her closest friends.

“Well. It’s their home, not hers. Those are their childhood photos on the fridge, their smells of paint and soot and lavender threaded through the patchy rugs, their pancake dinner routine, all of it settled years before August even got to New York. But it’s nice to look at. A comforting still life to be enjoyed from across the room.”

August sees her Flatbush apartment as a means to an end. She has no expectation of taking part in routines within the apartment or socializing with her roommates regularly. However, Myla and Niko quickly see to this: They welcome her with open arms, and, by the novel’s end, a picture of her Uncle Augie on the fridge shows how August has become part of the home.

“August has lived in a dozen rooms without ever knowing how to make a space into a home, how to expand to fill it like Niko or Myla or even Wes with his drawings in the windows. She doesn’t know, really, what it would take at this point. It’s been twenty-three years of passing through touching brick after brick, never once feeling a permanent tug.”

August is lonely when she moves to New York. She has purposely kept others at arm’s length, and she periodically refers back to Hurricane Katrina, in which all her belongings were destroyed, even her baby photos. She owns little, but slowly, she begins to find a home in her place with Niko, Mila, and