Structure

A Gift From Bob is organized into a prologue and eight titled chapters. The prologue, “London, December 2013,” is set “a few weeks before Christmas . . . inside the swish hotel near Trafalgar Square” (1). Throughout this opening section of the memoir, the author depicts a fancy Christmas party he and Bob attend shortly after the publication of his first book. Throughout the evening, Bowen struggles to orient to the extravagant nature of the affair and all of the attention the other attending writers give him and his cat. Bowen feels out of place because not long ago he was living off of the money he earned selling copies of the homeless magazine, The Big Issue, on the London streets. His encounter with another such Big Issue vendor after leaving the Christmas party not only floods Bowen with memories from his past, but enacts a formal shift into scenes from his...