Pip is the main character in the last as well as the first section of "Purity," reflecting Franzen's mirror-like structure, in which initially discrete stories bleed into and are informed by each other. But like Dickens' Pip, she also has a good heart. She has major trust issues, an overly casual approach toward sex and poor impulse control as well as a dead-end job reflecting her inability to decide what to make of her life.
The 23-year-old Pip we meet in Oakland, in the first of this novel's seven sections, can seem as immature as her Dickensian namesake originally is. It's a nod to the hero of Dickens' "Great Expectations" - a novel that, like "Purity" itself, explores how we project our childish fantasies onto our children, making it harder for anyone to ever mature. Purity Tyler - heroine of the latest novel confirming that Jonathan Franzen is among this country's best living writers - goes by the nickname Pip.
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