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Andy, the protagonist of Pieces of Her, undertakes a difficult journey of personal growth in this novel. Though her experiences eventually help her to overcome her anxieties and find her inner strength, she is, at the beginning of the novel, an indecisive young woman who lacks drive and struggles to make decisions. When she learns about her mother’s cancer diagnosis over the phone, for example, Andy freezes, finding herself unable to speak or move. Standing still in the middle of the street, she is almost hit by a car while her mother begs her to say something over the phone. This response is characteristic of Andy at this early point in the novel: when faced with a challenge, she hesitates, unable to act or even speak without being told what to do. In many ways, Andy is a typical young person, facing challenges similar to those faced by many others in her generation. Though her parents are supportive, she still struggles to meet their expectations and has little motivation. Fear of failure, the novel suggests, can prevent an individual from even trying to pursue her goals or dreams. Giving up on her challenging life in New York City, where she had once hoped to find work in the entertainment industry, she returns to Georgia to look after Laura during her recovery, but stays there for years afterwards, preferring the safety and comfort of the familiar to the risks of the unknown.
Read an in-depth character analysis of Andrea “Andy” Oliver.
When Andy’s easy but static lifestyle is disrupted by a series of surprising, violent incidents, her hesitant nature becomes a liability. When Jonah Helsinger points a gun at her in a local diner, for example, she freezes up, unable to speak or defend herself. Later, in the hospital, an impatient Laura tells Andy to do what she does best and keep her mouth shut. Indeed, when the police attempt to interrogate Andy, she again chokes up, overwhelmed by all that has happened. In the early chapters of the novel, Andy shuts down when confronted with anything surprising, uncomfortable, or dangerous. Her frequent inability to speak in difficult moments reflects her broader tendency to withdraw when faced with a challenge.
Read about Shocking Acts of Violence as a motif in Pieces of Her.
Ultimately, Laura’ surprising response to Helsinger in the diner brings their family to the attention of both law enforcement and criminals, and abruptly thrusts Andy out of her complacent state. She is suddenly forced to undertake a dangerous journey across the country, relying on her own skills and instincts to survive. Though many of the dramatic events that follow are painful and unexpected to her, they nevertheless provide Andy with the opportunity for personal growth. Unable to contact her mother and facing unknown enemies, she is forced to make quick decisions and commit to a course of action. Though her choices occasionally bring her closer to danger, she nevertheless gains a sense of independence and personal strength as she travels across the nation. Though her initial plan is simply to follow her mother’s directions and escape from any criminals who might be after her, she later takes the initiative to uncover the secret of her mother’s mysterious past.
Read an in-depth character analysis of Laura Oliver/Jane Queller.
The complicated relationship between Andy and her mother underscores the difficulty of truly knowing another person, even a close family member. Ultimately, Pieces of Her is a novel about personal growth, but it is also about the complexity of identity. Before the incident at the diner, Andy knows her mother as a mild, polite, and law-abiding woman who has lived a largely uneventful life, working as a speech therapist in the suburbs of Savannah, Georgia. When Andy sees Laura interacting with the family of one of her patients, she reflects upon her mother’s “professional” persona with some amusement. She recognizes that Laura behaves differently with patients and coworkers than she does with her own family, but she nevertheless assumes that she knows her mother’s “true” self. Her later discoveries about Laura’s past, however, completely undermine Andy’s certainty that she has a full understanding of her mother. After calmly disarming and killing Helsinger like a trained soldier, Laura seems like a completely new person to Andy. She dismisses the police officers as “pigs,” smokes cigarettes, and rudely tells Andy to leave her alone and move out of her house that night. As she reflects upon her mother’s unusual behavior and rewatches the video of the incident at the diner, Andy feels that she is watching a stranger, someone she doesn’t know at all.
As the plot develops, Andy will learn additional details about her mother that shock and confuse her, as she struggles to reconcile Laura, her mother, with Laura the stranger, who has hundreds of thousands of dollars and fake IDs hidden in a storage unit. Other characters present their own “version” of Laura. Gordon thinks of her as his inscrutable ex-wife who left him suddenly and unexpectedly, the local police detectives suspect her of being a cold-blooded killer, and her patients regard her as kind and professional. When a video from the incident at the diner becomes a television sensation, commentators characterize Laura as an action-movie hero or super-spy disguised as an ordinary housewife. Paula Kunde, who bitterly resents Laura, describes her old rival as both a hypocrite and an “actress” who adapts her personality to suit her audience and escape the consequences of her actions.
Read about Inner Peace as a motif in the novel.
Ultimately, as the title of the novel suggests, each of these different characters only know one single “piece” of Laura, but none of them understand her in her entirety. As Andy learns more about Laura, she also learns more about herself. Not only does she discover the truth of her own background, including the fact that her biological father is an infamous terrorist, but she also learns that she has abilities that she was unable to put into practice in her old, comfortable life. Throughout the course of the novel, she evades the police, drives across multiple states without use of her phone, completes research while on the run, successfully hides hundreds of thousands of dollars in storage units, defends herself against a man she believes is going to attack her, finds and destroys a tracking device, commandeers multiple vehicles, and tracks down various figures from Laura’s past, ultimately learning the truth about her family. When Laura watches Andy talking to Mike in the epilogue of the novel, she is surprised to see how confident and relaxed her daughter seems, reflecting the personal growth she has experienced since the beginning of the novel. In Pieces of Her, identity is complex, shifting, and multi-faceted, and as the novel proves, it can be nearly impossible to ever achieve a full and complete understanding of another person, no matter how deeply you know them.
