The Hole We're In is a 2010 novel by Gabrielle Zevin.
The Pomeroys are a family of apparently upstanding Seventh Day Adventists in Tennessee when Roger, the patriarch, decides to go back to college and earn his PhD in Education in Texas. The hit to the family's finances causes matriarch George to become reliant on credit card debt, including taking out a credit card for Vincent Pomeroy - her estranged son, who was thrown out of the family for attending college. The decision leads to a series of escalating disasters throughout the 1990s and the 2000s for their youngest daughter Patsy.
Tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The story begins in the mid 1990s...
- 20 Minutes into the Future: ...and ends in 2020 (the book was published in 2010), when abortion is illegal in the United States.
- Aborted Arc: Twice with Helen.
- The first time we meet her, she's thinking about how much she loathes her fiance and in a mountain of credit card debt that she's hiding from him. When we catch up with her after the first Time Skip, she seems Happily Married with two young children and her financial problems aren't mentioned (it's not even confirmed if she told him).
- The second time we meet her, her twin children climb a tree and then can't get down. After she thinks about how unwilling she is to raise a disabled child - having hated working with disabled or impaired people - her daughter Alice falls from the tree. Despite this Cliffhanger, Alice's fate isn't mentioned.
- Abortion Fallout Drama: Except, unusually, the person who pays the price isn't the person who got the abortion. George gets an abortion when she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. Roger finds out because she charges it to their credit card. However, she blames her own daughter Patsy and due to Roger's racism, he goes ballistic at the thought of her being pregnant and by a black classmate, which causes her to be thrown out and abused by her grandmother.
- Abusive Parents:
- George is financially abusive, taking out thousands in credit card debt in Vincent's name over a period of years. She is also at best a huge Useless Bystander Parent, allowing Patsy to take the blame for getting the abortion and allowing Roger to throw her out.
- Roger was physically abusive to Vincent, and is definitely emotionally abusive to both him and Patsy. He is also financially abusive to Patsy, refusing to help her even when he's in a significantly better financial position to do so.
- Bad Future:
- The case is made in-universe that the 2000s are this to the 1990s. A time of prosperity gives way to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession, and the destruction of American small towns.
- 2020 is an even clearer example. Abortion has been made illegal in the United States and, as a result, thousands of young girls are being maimed or killed every year in unsafe procedures.
- Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Patsy was scapegoated after her mother George got an abortion, sent away to live with her abusive grandmother, and emotionally abused. She is ultimately a good mother to her daughter Britt, sacrificing for her and ensuring she got a safe abortion when she needed one.
- Deep South: The story is set in rural Texas and Tennessee.
- Generational Saga: Starting in the mid-1990s, when Patsy is a teenager, it begins by focusing more on Roger and George, before the story skips forward to the mid-2000s (when Patsy is an Iraq War veteran), to the 2020s when Patsy's own sixteen-year-old daughter, Britt, is pregnant.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Discussed. The Pomeroys, as Seventh Day Adventists, are extremely against abortion. George, who is definitely not "good", gets an abortion in the late 1990s after getting pregnant unexpectedly - then blames Patsy for it. However, Patsy's daughter Brit also later has an abortion when she's sixteen, which is portrayed as a normal and understandable decision (even though it requires Patsy and Brit to go into multiple dangerous situations due to abortion being banned).
- Leitmotif: A rare literary example. Characters are constantly noted to be listening to the music of Britney Spears, especially her 1990s and 2000s hits when she was at the peak of her fame, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and "Oops! I Did It Again!"
- Karma Houdini: George dies young (in her fifties), and Roger does eventually die, but neither character faces any consequences for abusing their children, stealing money from them, or abandoning them.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Despite not facing consequences for anything else, George dies young after suffering from severe mental illness. Carolyn also dies young after sleeping with Roger (her student), even though it technically happens years later.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Patsy names her daughter Britt after Britney Spears.
- Student Debt Plot:
- The Pomroys were in a stable, middle-class position until patriarch Roger took a serious pay cut to do his PhD. This one decision ends up spiraling them into debt, causing George to illegally take out loans in her son Vincent's name.
- Due to the above, the only way Patsy can afford to go to college is by enlisting on the GI bill. Then The War on Terror begins, and she ends up being sent to Iraq. By the time she comes back, she's pregnant, still struggling to get college financed (and never really manages it), and living with severe PTSD.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Having always been Out of Focus, Helen is completely absent after the third Time Skip (to 2020).
