Loss

By using the first and third person points of view throughout the novel, the author explores and enacts the ways in which his main character Adam Krug experiences and confronts loss. At the start of the novel, Krug is stuck in the hospital with his wife, attempting to reconcile himself with her impending death. The majority of Chapter 1 is consumed by Krug's observations of his surroundings, both in and outside of the hospital. These observations appear in the first person, and allow the reader to feel as if she has intimate access to Krug's fraught state of mind. Suddenly, amidst these descriptions of the puddle, the poplars, and the houses surrounding the building, a halting line appears: "The operation has not been successful and my wife will die" (2). The line both interrupts the narrator's observations and explains Krug's reasons for meditating upon these images. The knowledge...