David is the main character of the novel, although the title represents his daughter, Phoebe. At the outset of the novel, he is a 33-year-old orthopedic surgeon who has been engaged in a whirlwind romance with Norah, his younger wife. David grew up in a poor West Virginian coal mining town with two apparently uneducated parents and a younger sister, June, who had Down’s Syndrome. As a result, “he felt himself to be an aberration, born with a love for learning in a family absorbed in simply scrabbling to get by” (7). Even in his own family, David felt like an outsider growing up, always incredibly interested in science,which he later uses as a kind of escape, for example, by going through the elements of the periodic table in order to calm himself down when he is upset or anxious.

This feeling of isolation continues through his education as he attempts to erase the poverty of his past, even going as far as to accept a registrar’s accidental change of his name. David attempts to completely divorce himself from his roots, both to escape the poverty of his upbringing and to escape the past grief of losing his sister at a young age.