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A Walmart is a city unto itself, every department its own neighborhood, blue shopping carters gliding between them like cars. You could go for miles under those cold fluorescent lights, past the lawnmowers and paint chips and crib sets and lipstick displays. You could ever sleep there, in theory anyway, on beds heaped with too many throw pillows.
Bones and All is primarily set on the periphery of American society. Due to their cannibalistic nature, “eaters” must move from place to place in order to avoid the attention of the authorities, and for that reason, they must become adept at surviving without financial security, a support network, or a consistent way of life. Throughout the course of the novel, Maren seeks shelter wherever she can do so without spending money, including an unlocked car, an abandoned house, a derelict farmhouse, a model-home, and the common space of a college dormitory. After being abandoned by Samantha, a college student who picks Maren up while hitch-hiking and collects gas-money from her, Maren has no money, nobody to turn to, and no clear sense of where to go next. Desperate, she seeks refuge inside a Walmart store in rural Iowa. There, she finds a sprawling commercial space that seems to her more like a city than a business. Maren takes advantage of the large scale of the store in order to avoid detection, shop-lifting food and ultimately consuming an employee in the parking lot. Bones and All examines the social landscapes of America, highlighting both the difficulties of surviving without money and the complex relationship between private property and public space.
"But that’s not why I read. When I read a book I can be somebody else. For two or three hundred pages I can have the problems of a normal person—even if that person is traveling through time or fighting with aliens.” I ran my hand over The Master and the Margarita. “I need the books. They’re all I’ve got.”
He looked at me then like he felt sorry for me.
Maren is an avid reader. Throughout the instability of her turbulent childhood, Maren owns few possessions, but she brings her small collection of books with her whenever she and Janelle move to a new location. Even after being abandoned by her mother, Maren selects her most prized books to carry with her in a rucksack as she travels across the country. Lee, who only carries practical items such as flashlights and tools with him, is surprised to see that Maren has been carrying around a heavy collection of books, and he dismisses literature as impractical. Together, they go through her collection of books, some of which were taken from her victims. Defending her interest in literature, she argues that books allow her to escape from her unhappy life, or to “be somebody else.” While reading a book, Maren is able to imagine herself as someone else—someone who isn’t an eater. Even the dramatic conflicts of literature such as time-travel and “fighting with aliens” are comforting to Maren in comparison to her own life, and the immense guilt that she feels. When Lee hears Maren’s explanation, he looks upon her pityingly, recognizing just how lonely and unhappy Maren has been for most of her life.
“I’ve never had a stuffed animal before.”
“No? I thought every girl had loads of them.”
“Not me. My mother never let me have any, because if I got one then I’d want more, and she said it would be too much to pack.” Jetsam. That’s what you call the stuff they throw off a ship into the sea.
While driving across the country, Lee and Maren encounter a carnival. At a “Lucky Toss” game booth, they witness a rude young employee cheat a boy out of a prize that he rightfully won, taunting him cruelly. Lee plays the game and wins two prizes, giving one to the boy and the other to Maren. For Maren, this marks an emotionally significant moment. She has, by this point in the story, begun to develop romantic feelings for Lee, and she cherishes this gift, as it seems to imply that he thinks of her as something like a girlfriend. However, the gift carries additional significance for Maren due to the nature of her upbringing. Through her childhood, her periodic incidents of cannibalism force her and her mother to move across the country to escape the attention of the police. Because they must move locations quickly and often, Maren owns few possessions other than her small collection of books. Not wanting her to become attached to lots of similar toys, Janelle does not permit Maren to own stuffed animals. When Maren receives the gift from Lee, she thinks of the word “jetsam,” or in other words, unwanted goods that are thrown off of a ship. She thinks of all the things she has had to leave behind while moving as “jetsam,” but she also feels like jetsam herself, as her mother left her behind after her sixteenth birthday.
