Abstract

Ins and Outs is a novel that explores the dynamics of a first encounter between its two protagonists, Hannah and Mark, who meet online on a photography subreddit. After two years of photo exchanges and video chats, Hannah decides to accept Mark’s invitation to stay with him in New York City: there is a retrospective at MOMA of the photographer Hannah Molson, whom they both admire and whose work they have discussed at length. Mark is a loner who is obsessed with time and numbers, convinced that every significant action he makes must align with a specific point in time. He looks for meaningful coincidences everywhere to reassure himself that he’s on the right path. The encounter with Hannah, whom he’s fallen in love with, pushes his defense mechanisms into overdrive as he invents nightmare scenarios to preclude the possibility of them taking place in real life; Mark believes that to imagine a situation is to erase it from reality. In this way, the novel deals with the mechanics of decision-making, how over-thinking can lead to anxiety and paralysis, and the role magical thinking plays in our choices, a pseudo-rationalization of a chaotic universe that is in fact highly irrational.