Andrew Bloom's attempted rape of Jenny Bloom

Andrew Bloom's attempted rape of Jenny Bloom is the novel's hidden origin wound—the night Lily Bloom, as a child, witnessed her father on top of her mother on the couch, his hand around her throat and his other hand pulling up her dress, and stood frozen before grabbing the biggest knife she could find, only to be carried away by Atlas Corrigan. This event, revealed through Lily's Ellen Diaries, establishes the template of domestic violence that echoes through Lily's own marriage to Ryle Kincaid, and it is the moment that defines Lily's lifelong hatred of her father and her fear of becoming her mother.

The Scene on the Couch

The assault unfolds in the living room of the Bloom family home, witnessed directly by a young Lily. Andrew Bloom is on top of Jenny on the couch, his hand around her throat, while his other hand pulls up her dress. Jenny tries to fight him off, begging him to get off her, but he hits her right across the face and tells her to shut up. His words, which Lily says she will never forget, are a chilling dismissal of Jenny's resistance: "You want attention? I'll give you some fucking attention." At that, Jenny goes real still and stops fighting him. Lily hears her crying, and then Jenny says, "Please be quiet. Lily is here." The horror of the moment is compounded by Jenny's plea—she is not asking for rescue but for silence, so that her daughter will not witness the rape. Lily's retelling in her diary distills the unbearable irony: "Please be quiet while you rape me, dear."

Lily's Frozen Response and the Knife

Lily's reaction to the assault is one of paralysis followed by a desperate, almost out-of-body attempt at intervention. She stands frozen, watching her mother be attacked, unable to move. The hatred she feels in that moment is not directed at her father alone; she confesses to Ellen that she didn't know one human was capable of feeling so much hate inside one heart, and she is not talking about her father—she is talking about herself, for her own inaction. Then, as if she is not even in her own body, she walks to the kitchen, opens a drawer, and grabs the biggest knife she can find. She knows she is not going to use it; she just wants something bigger than herself that could scare him away from her mother. But right before she makes it out of the kitchen, two arms go around her waist and pick her up from behind. She drops the knife—her father does not hear it, but her mother does. Atlas carries her back to her bedroom, and when they are inside, Lily starts hitting him in the chest, crying and doing everything she can to get back out there to her mother. Atlas will not move. He just wraps his arms around her and says, "Lily, calm down," over and over, holding her there for a long time until she accepts that he is not going to let her go back out there, and he is not going to let her have that knife.

The Aftermath and Jenny's Denial

The immediate aftermath of the assault is marked by Jenny's refusal to acknowledge what happened. Atlas is already at the window about to leave when Jenny stops him. She tells Lily that Andrew is drunk, that he heard Lily's door shut and went to their bedroom, and that if Lily calls the police, it will just make it worse. "Just let him sleep it off, it'll be better tomorrow," she says. Lily, with tears stinging her eyes, shakes her head and cries out, "Mom, he was trying to rape you!" Jenny ducks her head and winces at the word. She shakes her head again and insists, "It's not like that, Lily. We're married, and sometimes marriage is just . . . you're too young to understand it." Lily's response is a vow that will shape her entire life: "I hope to hell I never do." The exchange reveals the deep denial that enables the cycle of abuse to continue—Jenny's rationalization that marriage somehow legitimizes what Andrew did, and her desperate attempt to protect Lily from the truth even as she is failing to protect herself.

The Pattern of Apology and Escalation

Jenny's later explanation to Lily, given years afterward, reveals that the attempted rape was not an isolated incident but part of a predictable and escalating pattern. She tells Lily that everyone has a limit—what they are willing to put up with before they break—and that when she married Andrew, she knew exactly what her limit was. But slowly, with every incident, her limit was pushed a little more. The first time Andrew hit her, he was immediately sorry and swore it would never happen again. The second time, he was even more sorry. The third time, it was more than a hit—it was a beating. And every single time, she took him back. But the fourth time, it was only a slap, and when that happened, she felt relieved, thinking, "At least he didn't beat me this time. This wasn't so bad." Jenny's account is a devastating illustration of how abuse normalizes itself: every incident chips away at the victim's limit, and every time she chooses to stay, it makes the next time that much harder to leave. Eventually, she loses sight of her limit altogether, because she starts to think, "I've lasted five years now. What's five more?"

The Echo in Lily's Marriage

The attempted rape of Jenny Bloom becomes the template for Lily's own experience of domestic violence with Ryle Kincaid. When Ryle first pushes Lily in the kitchen, knocking her backward so that she hits her face on a cabinet door handle, Lily does not hear Ryle's voice—she hears her father's. "I'm sorry, Jenny. It was an accident. I'm so sorry," her father's voice says, and then, "I'm sorry, Lily. It was an accident. I'm so sorry." The parallel is explicit: Ryle's apology is indistinguishable from Andrew's. Later, when Ryle pushes Lily down the stairs and insists, "You fell down the stairs," Lily knows she did not fall—he pushed her, again. The author's note confirms that the first incident between Ryle and Lily in the kitchen is exactly what happened the first time Andrew ever hit Jenny: she was cooking a casserole, he had been drinking, he pulled the casserole out of the oven without using a pot holder, she thought it was funny and laughed, and the next thing she knew, he had hit her so hard she flew across the kitchen floor. Lily's struggle to leave Ryle mirrors her mother's inability to leave Andrew, and Lily explicitly compares herself to her mother, fearing that she is emulating Jenny's behavior just as Ryle might be emulating Andrew's. But Lily insists they are their own individuals in an entirely different situation—her father never had an excuse for his anger, nor was he immediately apologetic, and the way he treated her mother was much worse than what has happened between Ryle and her. This rationalization, which Lily uses to justify staying with Ryle, is the same logic that kept Jenny trapped for years.

The Legacy of the Assault

The attempted rape of Jenny Bloom casts a long shadow over the entire novel. It is the source of Lily's hatred for her father, a hatred she carries for most of her life, and it is the reason she spends her childhood wishing she could have stopped him. It is also the moment that binds Lily and Atlas together—Atlas is the one who carries her away from the knife, who holds her and calms her, who prevents her from intervening in a way that could have destroyed her. The event is revealed through Lily's Ellen Diaries, the letters she writes to Ellen DeGeneres, which become the novel's confessional structure. When Ryle later reads these journals, the revelation of this childhood trauma—along with the rest of Lily's history with Atlas—triggers his most violent assault on her, the one that finally drives her to leave. The assault on Jenny is thus not only the origin of Lily's understanding of abuse but also the catalyst for the novel's climax. The novel's resources section, which directs readers to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, implicitly acknowledges that Jenny's generation had no such support—no local women's shelters, very little government support—and that leaving meant risking not having a roof over their heads. Jenny's eventual decision to leave Andrew, made when Lily was almost three and her older sister almost five, came after years of abuse and required a strength that the novel presents as both heroic and heartbreakingly delayed. The attempted rape of Jenny Bloom is the event that Lily spends her whole life trying not to repeat, and it is the event that ultimately teaches her, through her mother's example, that breaking the pattern is possible—but only at a terrible cost.