the simultaneity montage — "Avril Incandenza’s whereabouts on the grounds…"

The montage pins every character to an exact place at one instant — Gately asleep 1200 meters east, Poor Tony in a library stall, Pemulis and Struck at a Reference table, Tavis groping under his sofa, Orin in a Phoenix hotel — and then arrives at Avril and cannot locate her: her whereabouts "throughout this interval unknown." It's a structural masterstroke of the theme. The woman who installs herself in the exact center of every room, the Black Hole of Human Attention, is the one person the book's god's-eye view can't fix a position for, even on her own grounds. The center registers as an absence; the most-present figure in the family becomes, at the one moment the narration tries to pin everyone, unfindable. Her gravity is everywhere and her location is nowhere.