Expiration Dates

Content Warning: This section discusses heart failure, chronic illness, and medical trauma.

Daphne is the protagonist and first-person narrator. She is an intelligent, hardworking 33-year-old Jewish woman who works as the assistant to a major Hollywood producer. She was born and raised in Los Angeles’s Palisades neighborhood and has spent almost all of her life in the Los Angeles area. Her family is upper middle class, comfortable but not extravagantly wealthy.

Daphne’s close relationship with her parents and her continued residence in her hometown reveals the value that she places on stability, familiarity, and psychological safety, due in large part to her chronic heart condition: She suffered catastrophic heart failure at the age of 20 and now lives with the knowledge that her heart could fail at any moment. Because of her health, she is indecisive about what she wants in life and feels stuck both professionally and emotionally. She is afraid to commit to anything or anyone, and her “longest relationship” is with her dog, Murphy. Throughout the novel, her willingness to welcome uncertainty, both romantically and professionally, grows alongside her acceptance of her heart condition, revealing the limitations that Daphne imposed on herself following her diagnosis.