Gabriel

Gabriel is the boyfriend at the center of Taylor’s most consuming relationship during college. The novel gives little direct access to him: his character is chiefly defined through the damaging pattern of his relationship with Taylor and through what Lizzie tells Kath about its consequences.

Relationship with Taylor

Taylor meets Gabriel during college orientation. Over the following four years, she and Kath grow distant as Taylor’s relationship with him becomes obsessive, marked by repeated arguments and painful reconciliations. The account describes the pair as hurting one another and then tending to each other’s wounds, a cycle that makes their intimacy appear both intense and destructive.

In Taylor’s final year of college, she and Gabriel break up, and he leaves for California. When he agrees to reconcile, Taylor follows him and puts college aside. Her decision marks how far the relationship has come to organize her life: the possibility of getting back together is enough for her to abandon her studies.

Consequences and Aftermath

Lizzie later visits Taylor and reports that she is doing badly: she has lost ten pounds, drinks vodka tonics one after another, and has dark circles under her eyes and bruises on her arm. The evidence does not specify who caused the bruises or assign responsibility for the other signs of distress, but it places them in the period when Taylor has followed Gabriel to California. When Lizzie asks Kath whether they should persuade Taylor to seek treatment, Kath refuses to involve herself, regarding Taylor’s decisions as her own.

By the time Kath and Lizzie are living in Brooklyn, Taylor and Gabriel’s relationship has ended. Lizzie knows more of its history than Kath, including infidelities, suicide attempts, and police interventions; the account does not specify who was responsible for each incident. Taylor is still in California, but appears to be doing much better after leaving Gabriel: she has changed jobs, found a new therapist, and completed her degree.

Narrative Role

Gabriel’s importance comes less from an independently developed portrait than from the contrast between Taylor’s life with him and her apparent recovery after the relationship ends. Because Kath learns most of the details through Lizzie, Gabriel’s story reaches the reader at a distance, filtered through the friends’ uneven knowledge. That distance also helps explain why Taylor’s deterioration does not immediately draw Kath back into her life: the relationship is both a defining crisis for Taylor and something Kath has chosen not to intervene in.