“And so in the house of the Lamberts, as in St. Jude, as in the country as a whole, life came to be lived underground.”

This line refers to Alfred’s hiding out in the basement of his house and also to Enid’s hiding the Axon Corporation letter from him. It also refers to a more general sort of evasiveness and denial, that of the American mood during the boom-market years. It is a time of great wealth and plenitude but also of anxiety and guilt; people sense that the source of this national abundance is ugly, and that consequences will eventually catch up with them.

“[Denise] was the one who’d instructed Chip to invite his parents to stop and have lunch in New York today. She’d sounded like the World Bank dictating terms to a Latin debtor state, because, unfortunately, Chip owed her money.”

Denise is more successful and financially prosperous than Chip, which gives her a position of seniority, even though she is the youngest Lambert sibling. The passage shows the degree to which financial and sociopolitical concerns can color intimate family life. Chip’s lack of financial security gives him a significantly less-powerful position in the family’s hierarchy.

“Chip had grown up listening to his father pontificate on the topics of Men’s Work and Women’s Work and the importance of maintaining the distinction; in a spirit of correction, he stuck with Toni for nearly a decade.”

Chip is particularly embarrassed by his father’s social and cultural conservatism. His vow to be more progressive than Alfred leads him to stay with a partner with whom he is ill-matched for too long. It is a poor criterion for choosing romantic partners and one that ultimately shows the power that Chip’s father still wields over him.